Sig/ii ill Sa^'agcs. 171 



happens to be a pretty close resemblance in several 

 of them, as in the case of my gambling friend's half- 

 a-dozen sparrows, which, like snowflakes, were 

 " seen rather than distinguished," this indistinctness 

 of their images on the eye and the mind causes 

 them all to appear alike. We have, as it were, two 

 visions — one to which all objects appear vividly 

 and close to us, and are permanently photographed 

 on the mind ; the other which sees things at a dis- 

 tance, and with that indistinctness of outline and 

 imiformity of colour which distance gives. 



In this place I had proposed to draw on my La 

 Plata note-books for some amusing illustrations of 

 this fact of our two sights ; but it is not necessary 

 to go so far afield for illustrations, or to insist on a 

 thing so familiar. " The shepherd knows his 

 sheep," is a saying just as true of this country — of 

 Scotland, at all events — as of the far East. Detec- 

 tives, also military men who take an interest in 

 their profession, see faces more sharply than most 

 people, and remember them as distinctly as others 

 remember the faces of a very limited number of 

 individuals — of those they love or fear or constantly 

 associate with. Sailors see atmospheric changes 

 which are not apparent to others ; and, in like 

 manner, the physician detects the signs of malady 

 in faces which to the uninstructed vision seem 

 healthy enough. And so on through the whole 

 range of professions and pursuits which men have ; 

 each person inhabits a little world of his own, as it 

 were, which to others is only part of the distant 



