86 UPLAND AND MEADOW. 



the hour in just such places. At the time of my first 

 visit to the tree-top, I put myself in the place of a hawk, 

 and hunted, from where I sat, for a mouse in the dead 

 grass seventy feet below me. Did I see one ? Emphat- 

 ically, No ! and I have my doubts as to the ability of 

 any hawk to see at that distance so small an object ; and 

 I say this, bearing in mind that Mr. Eomanes, in his in- 

 valuable work on " Mental Evolution in Animals," has 

 remarked, " The eye of a hawk ... is able to distin- 

 guish from a great height a protectively colored animal 

 from the surface of the ground which it so closely imi- 

 tates." Perhaps, if a mouse ventured over the snow, 

 or even moved slowly over bare ground, it would be 

 seen, but when we consider how seldom the running 

 mouse is really exposed, and how closely it hugs the 

 ground, and creeps under or among the grass and weeds, 

 rather than on them, it becomes far more probable that a 

 perched hawk is not on the lookout for prey, but is 

 cither asleep or absorbed in contemplation. Certainly 

 there is no better place in which to pass a meditative 

 half-liour than when perched in a high tree. There is 

 much to be gained, sometimes, in being even fifty feet 

 above the common level of your fellow-mortals. To see 

 what your neighbor fails to discover gives you the ad- 

 vantage over him that you can tell him something that 

 he did not know, and so pass for a bit of a philosopher, 

 although, in fact, you may be much nearer a fool than 

 he is. "We all know how the village ladies look only to 

 the dominie for information on every subject, yet how 

 frequently are these very men profoundly ignorant of 

 natural history. 



