HENEY D. THOEEAU 35 



touch to the portrait of bird or beast that I can 

 recall, — no important or significant fact to their 

 lives. What he saw in this field everybody may 

 see who looks ; it is patent. He had not the detec- 

 tive eye of the great naturalist; he did not catch 

 the clews and hints dropped here and there, the 

 quick, flashing movements, the shy but significant 

 gestures by which new facts are disclosed, mainly 

 because he was not looking for them. His eye was 

 not penetrating and interpretive. It was full of 

 speculation; it was sophisticated with literature, 

 sophisticated with Concord, sophisticated with him- 

 self. His mood was subjective rather than objec- 

 tive. He was more intent on the natural history 

 of his own thought than on that of the bird. To 

 the last, his ornithology was not quite sure, not 

 quite trustworthy. In his published journal he 

 sometimes names the wrong bird; and what short 

 work a naturalist would have made of his night- 

 warbler, which Emerson reports Thoreau had been 

 twelve years trying to identify ! It was perhaps his 

 long-lost turtle-dove, in some one of its disguises. 

 lYom his journal it would seem that he was a long 

 time puzzled to distinguish the fox-colored sparrow 

 from the tree or Canadian sparrow, — a very easy 

 task to one who has an eye for the birds. But he 

 was looking too intently for a bird behind the bird, 

 — for a mythology to shine through his ornithology. 

 "The song sparrow and the transient fox-colored 

 sparrow, — have they brought me no message this 

 year? Is not the coming of the fox-colored spar- 



