6 HABITS OF OBSERVATION. 



day to spend a holiday, and, without knowing it, 

 went the same way, across the same fields, over the 

 same moor, by the same stream, near the same sand- 

 pit, and up the same hill. 



When they came home at evening, they were 

 asked what they had seen. Dick, who came home 

 first, said he had had a very dull, stupid walk, and • 

 had seen nothing of any consequence. Will, on the 

 contrary, had seen, he said, so many odd and won- 

 derfijl things that he had never more thoroughly 

 enjoyed himself. He had seen the woodpecker at 

 work, and the lapwing feigning lameness to draw him 

 from her nest, and many other birds, and a snake, 

 and some beautiful flowers, and had found some 

 curious fossils, and had brought home his handker- 

 chief quite full. And yet Dick had found nothing 

 even to look at ! The fact was, the one had walked 

 about with his eyes shut, and the other had kept his 

 wide open. 



And, however long we live in any place, it is 

 the same — there is always much that is fresh to see. 

 White, the naturalist of Selborne, says that ' that dis- 

 trict produces the greatest variety which is the most 

 examined ;' and another naturalist observes, that 'so 

 rich is nature that a man born a thousand years hence 

 will still find enough left for him to do and notice.' 

 But • many waste a whole life without ever being 

 once well awake in it, passing through the world 

 like a heedless traveller, without making any reflec- 

 tions or observations, without any design or purpose 

 beseeming" a man.' 



