I find I see, almost without effort, nearly every bird within sight in
the field or wood I pass through (a flit of the wing, a flirt of the
tail are enough, though the flickering leaves do all conspire to hide
them), and that with like ease the birds see me, though unquestionably
the chances are immensely in their favor. The eye sees what it has the
means of seeing, truly. You must have the bird in your heart before you
can find it in the bush. The eye must have purpose and aim. No one ever
yet found the walking fern who did not have the walking fern in his
mind. A person whose eye is full of Indian relics picks them up in
every field he walks through.

One season I was interested in the tree-frogs, especially the tiny
piper that 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