hat one hears about the woods and brushy fields,--the hyla of
the swamps become a denizen of the trees; I had never seen him in this
new role. But this season, having hylas in mind, or rather being ripe
for them, I several times came across them. One Sunday, walking amid
some bushes, I captured two. They leaped before me, as doubtless they
had done many times before; but though not looking for or thinking of
them, yet they were quickly recognized, because the eye had been
commissioned to find them. On another occasion, not long afterward, I
was hurriedly loading my gun in the October woods in hopes of
overtaking a gray squirrel that was fast escaping through the treetops,
when one of these lilliput frogs, the color of the fast-yellowing
leaves, leaped near me. I saw him only out of the corner of my eye and
yet bagged him, because I had already made him my own.

Nevertheless the habit of observation is the habit of clear and
decisive gazing: not by a first casual glance, but by a steady,
deliberate aim of the eye, are the rare and characteristic things
discovered. You must look intently, and hold your eye firmly to the
spot, to see more than do the rank and file of mankind. The
sharpshooter picks out his man, and knows him with fatal certainty from
a stump, or a rock, or a cap on a pole. The phrenologists do well to
locate, not only form, color, and weight, in the region of the eye, but
also a faculty which they call individuality,--that which separates,
discriminates, and sees in every object its essential character. This
is just as necessary to the naturalist as to the artist or the poet.
The sharp eye notes specific points and differences,--it seizes upon
and preserves the individuality of the thing.

Persons frequently describe to me some bird they have seen or heard,
and ask me to name it, but in most cases the bird might be any one of a
dozen, or else it is totally unlike any bird found on this continent.
They have either seen falsely or else vaguely. Not so the farm youth
who wrote me one winter day that he had seen a single pair of strange
birds, which he describes as follows: "They were about the size of the
'chippie;' the tops of their heads were red, and the breast of the male
was of the same color, while that of the female was much lighter; their
rumps were also faintly tinged with red. If I have described them so
that you would know them, please write me their names." There can be
little doubt but the young