FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



up with them. "Bush-tits," he said to himself; 

 "they can be nothing else." And bush-tits they 

 were, as he feels confident (but he will be surer, 

 he hopes, when he gets to California), of the 

 species known as lead-colored. It was a shame 

 they should have been so restless. There was 

 plenty of sage-brush, on the seeds of which they 

 seemed to be feeding; but, like winter birds in 

 general, they must take a bite here and a bite 

 there, as if, by sampling the same thing in a 

 dozen places, they somehow secured variety. 

 They were gone, at all events, and the bird-gazer 

 was starting back, half jubilant, half disconsolate, 

 toward the road, when, from almost under his 

 feet, a jack rabbit sprang up and, with a leap or 

 two over the sage-brush bushes (a great leg with 

 the hurdles is the jack rabbit), took his black tail 

 out of sight. 



Such, by the reader's leave, were some of the 

 trifles with which a Yankee bird-gazer beguiled 

 his long-anticipated, much-talked-about week at 

 the Grand Caflon of the Colorado ! 



Stevenson begins one of his early essays by 

 remarking, '^ It is a difficult matter to make the 

 most of any given place." Of course it is; and 

 not only difficult, but impossible, as he would 

 have known, had he been a few years older. 

 There will always remain a corner unexplored, a 

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