H 



A SHARP LOOKOUT 



wanted to appear terrible to human eyes. 

 Then the creatures had sprung out of the 

 earth as by magic. I found some in a fur- 

 row in a plowed field that had encroached 

 upon a swamp. In the fall the plow had 

 been there, and had turned up only the 

 moist earth ; now a little water was stand- 

 ing there, from which the AprU sunbeams 

 had invoked these airy, fairy creatures. 

 They belong to the crustaceans, but appar- 

 ently no creature has so thin or impalpable 

 a crust ; you can almost see through them ; 

 certainly you can see what they have had 

 for dinner, if they have eaten substantial 

 food. 



All we know about the private and essen- 

 tial natural history of the bees, the birds, 

 the fishes, the animals, the plants, is the re- 

 sult of close, patient, quick-witted observa- 

 tion. Yet Nature will often elude one for 

 all his pains and alertness. Thoreau, as re- 

 vealed in his journal, was for years trying to 

 settle in his own mind what was the first 

 thing that stirred in spring, after the severe 

 New England winter, — in what was the 

 first sign or pulse of returning life manifest ; 

 and he never seems to have been quite sure. 

 He could not get his salt on the tail of this 

 207 



