to have before his eye, and therefore they
are able to take their fixed places in the ranks as surely and
accurately as trained soldiers.

We can all the more readily imagine such a personal acquaintance among
animals, as we know that even men learn with comparative ease to
distinguish individuals in flocks of the same species of beasts. If we
townspeople see a flock of sheep, it presents to us the same ovine
face--only with some difference between old and young. But a
peasant-woman can at once take out her two or three ewes from the big
flock that stands staring by the door--indeed, she can even recognise
very young lambs by their faces.

Thus I believe I understand the reason for the wild-goose's order of
flight better than when I thought of a plough that 'clove' the air; and,
as already stated, it may well be that many have been just as wise long
ago. But I venture to wager that the great majority of people have never
thought of the matter at all, and I fear that multitudes will think of
it somewhat in this fashion: 'What is it to me how those silly geese
fly?'

I often revert to the strangely thoughtless manner in which knowledge of
animal life is skipped over in the teaching of the young. The rude and
wild conception of animals which the clergy teach from the Old Testament
seems to cause only deep indifference on the part of the girls, and, in
the boys, an unholy desire to ramble about and blaze away with a gun.

Here there has been a shooting as on a drill-ground all the summer,
until now only the necessary domestic animals are left. Among the cows,
the starlings were shot into tatters, so that they crawled wingless,
legless, maimed, into holes in the stone fences to die. If a respectable
curlew sat by the water's edge mirroring his long bill, a rascal of a
hunter lay behind a stone and sighted; and was there a water-puddle with
rushes that could conceal a young duck, there immediately came a
fully-armed hero with raised gun. Even English have been here! They had
some new kind of guns--people said--that shot as far as you pleased, and
round corners and behind knolls. They murdered, I assure you; they laid
the district bare as pest and pox! I must stop, for I am growing so
angry.

I have had thoughts of applying for a post as inspector of birds in the
Westland. I should travel round and teach people about the birds,
exhibit the common ones, so that all might have the pleasure of
recognising them in Nature; ac