one's position, the
little owl appears in sharp outline against the bright disk, seated on
his many-tined perch."

A few days after my visit he wrote me that he had identified the
yellow-throated or Dominican warbler in his woods, the first he had
ever seen. I had to confess to him that I had never seen the bird. It
is very rare north of Maryland. The same letter records several
interesting little incidents in the wild life about him:

"The other night I took out the boys in rowboats for a camping-out
expedition. We camped on the beach under a low bluff near the grove
where a few years ago on a similar expedition we saw a red fox. This
time two young foxes, evidently this year's cubs, came around the camp
half a dozen times during the night, coming up within ten yards of the
fire to pick up scraps and seeming to be very little bothered by our
presence. Yesterday on the tennis ground I found a mole shrew. He was
near the side lines first. I picked him up in my handkerchief, for he
bit my hand, and after we had all looked at him I let him go; but in a
few minutes he came back and deliberately crossed the tennis grounds
by the net. As he ran over the level floor of the court, his motion
reminded all of us of the motion of those mechanical mice that run
around on wheels when wound up. A chipmunk that lives near the tennis
court continually crosses it when the game is in progress. He has done
it two or three times this year, and either he or his predecessor has
had the same habit for several years. I am really puzzled to know why
he should go across this perfectly bare surface, with the players
jumping about on it, when he is not frightened and has no reason that
I can see for going. Apparently he grows accustomed to the players and
moves about among them as he would move about, for instance, among a
herd of cattle."

The President is a born nature-lover, and he has what does not always
go with this passion--remarkable powers of observation. He sees
quickly and surely, not less so with the corporeal eye than with the
mental. His exceptional vitality, his awareness all around, gives the
clue to his powers of seeing. The chief qualification of a born
observer is an alert, sensitive, objective type of mind, and this
Roosevelt has in a preeminent degree.

You may know the true observer, not by the big things he sees, but by
the little things; and then not by the things he sees with effort and
premeditation, but by his effor