THE SEEING EYE 327 



in us and in the bird or other observer. There is 

 a large black fly with a red tail that resembles quite 

 closely the red-tailed humble-bee. But beneath its 

 livery it is fly through and through. Any man that 

 needs, any bird that needs, can catch it without 

 the least fear of its sting, and without having first 

 to recite the difference between the diptera and the 

 hymenoptera. 



Motion is a great revealer. If a brown leaf stirs 

 in the hedge, we know it for a mouse. If a bit of red 

 in a brown tangle of brown grass and dead leaves 

 blinks, we know it for the eye of a partridge sitting 

 on her eggs there. The flicker of a fin reveals the 

 brownest of trout on the brownest of stones. If we 

 cannot get motion in the object, motion in ourselves 

 will give us the secret The grey stone in a field 

 of grey stones that looks like a rabbit from the N.E. 

 may be a stone, but if it also looks like a rabbit from 

 the N.N.E. and from the E. by N.E., it almost certainly 

 is a rabbit. The bird's-eye view is not taken from 

 the per oh, but from the wing. Everything below 

 then moves. Patches of colour come away from 

 their ground and reveal themselves as round objects, 

 side views change to full views and head views to 

 tail views. A stone with one ear may be a coin- 

 cidence, but a stone with two ears and a tail must 

 be eatable, and we stoop at it with confidence. No 

 one would suggest that a hawk reasons the matter 

 out like this, yet it is the material of this chain of 

 reason that makes him decide that the thing is an 

 animal. 



The eye is so perfect a servant that it is sheer 

 supererogation to bring in an extra faculty, or to 



