146 Countrymen's Nature Lore 



to guide inference aright and to criticize the 

 impressions of sense. An uninstructed observer 

 may see a starling shivering its feathers against 

 the sunlight striking over a roof-ridge, and come 

 in to report that he has seen a bird in the garden 

 with feathers of bright gold. The eye of one who 

 knows birds may receive just the same impression 

 of golden splendour ; but his mind will be so 

 incredulous of the optic message that he will look 

 again until he discovers the bird to be nothing 

 but a starling. But the rustic is fortified by no 

 such training in what is possible or probable ; a 

 bird with feathers golden and glittering is to him 

 no more improbable than a squeaking moth with 

 a skull and crossbones on its shoulders. Reasoning 

 provides him with results of strange unreason ; 

 and the most unimaginative ploughman may bring 

 home stories stranger than a fairy-tale. 



