LEAF AND TENDRIL 



there! It is not one with the ground, it is not at 

 home there. In the tree it is more in keeping with 

 the changing forms and the sharper contrasts. 



The environment is potent in many ways. Every- 

 thing is modified by the company it keeps. Do not 

 the quiet tints and sounds of the country have their 

 effect upon the health and character of the dwellers 

 there? The citizen differs in look and manner 

 from the countryman, the lawyer from the preacher 

 and the doctor, the seaman from the landsman, the 

 hermit from the cosmopolite. There is the rural 

 dullness, and there is the metropolitan alertness. 

 Local color, local quality, are realities. States, 

 cities, neighborhoods, have shades of difference in 

 speech and manner. The less traveled a people 

 are, the more marked these differences appear. 

 The more a man stays at home, the more the stamp 

 of his environment is upon him. The more limited 

 the range of an animal, the more it is modified by 

 its immediate surroundings. Thus the loon is so 

 much of a water bird that upon the land it can 

 only hobble, and the swallow is so much a creature 

 of the air that its feet are of little use to it. Per- 

 fect adaptability usually narrows the range, as the 

 skater is at home only upon the ice. 



Here are two closely related birds of ours, the 

 oven-bird and the water-thrush, both with speckled 

 breasts, but each tinted more or less like the ground 

 it walks upon, the one like the dry leaves, the other 



