FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



ward in size and awkward in shape, but by all 

 accounts a powerful weapon, capable of inflicting 

 a painful wound upon the hand that intrudes into 

 its burrow, cutting to the bone and tightening 

 its grip till the jaws are pried apart or the bird 

 is killed. 



The sight of that one superb creature, transient 

 as it was, would have been enough of itself to 

 make this fourth day of June a day memorable 

 in the life of a landlubberly ornithological en- 

 thusiast. All the pigments of all the painters in 

 the world could not have yielded a brighter red 

 than that puffin, hatched in a noisome dark bur- 

 row and living at sea, had managed somehow to 

 secure, along with a pair of most elegant flowing 

 pale-yellow plumes, as a nuptial decoration. 



Marvelous things in the way of color has old 

 Mother Earth hidden away from human observa- 

 tion. It ought to be evident to the dullest and 

 proudest among us (for none but the dull are 

 likely to be very proud) that the beauties of the 

 world were not made exclusively for man's ap- 

 preciation. We are not the only ones with eyes 

 and ears, though it may be true, as we fondly as- 

 sure ourselves, hard-pushed as we might be to 

 prove it, that we stand at the top of things. 



But the shearwaters ! They were the wonder 

 of the day, after all. Plow strange a life they 

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