28 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



the special details and characteristic markings that 

 this mask covers. Science confers new powers of 

 vision. Whenever you have learned to discriminate 

 the birds, or the plants, or the geological features of a 

 country, it is as if new and keener eyes were added. 

 Of course one must not only see sharply, but read 

 aright what he sees. The facts in the life of Nature 

 that are transpiring about us are like written words 

 that the observer is to arrange into sentences. Or 

 the writing is in cipher and he must furnish the key. 

 A female oriole was one day observed very much pre- 

 occupied under a shed where the refuse from the 

 horse stable was thrown. She hopped about among 

 the barn fowls, scolding them sharply when they 

 came too near her. The stable, dark and cavernous, 

 was just beyond. The bird, not finding what she 

 wanted outside, boldly ventured into the stable, and 

 was presently captured by the farmer. What did she 

 want? was the query. What but a horsehair for 

 her nest which was in an apple-tree near by ? and 

 she was so bent on having one that I have no doubt 

 she would have tweaked one out of the horse's tail 

 had he been in the stable. Later in the season I 

 examined her nest, and found it sewed through and 

 through with several long horsehairs, so that the bird 

 persisted in her search till the hair was found. 



Little dramas and tragedies and comedies, little 

 characteristic scenes, are always being enacted in the 

 lives of the birds, if our eyes are sharp enough to 

 see them. Some clever observer saw this little com- 

 edy played among some English sparrows, and wrote 



