Some friends of mine who lived in the country tried to describe to me a
bird that built a nest in a tree within a few feet of the house. As it
was a brown bird, I should have taken it for a wood thrush, had not the
nest been described as so thin and loose that from beneath the eggs
could be distinctly seen. The most pronounced feature in the
description was the barred appearance of the under side of the bird's
tail. I was quite at sea, until one day, when we were driving out, a
cuckoo flew across the road in front of us, when my friends exclaimed,
"There is our bird!" I had never known a cuckoo to build near a house,
and I had never noted the appearance the tail presents when viewed from
beneath; but if the bird had been described in its most obvious
features, as slender, with a long tail, cinnamon brown above and white
beneath, with a curved bill, any one who knew the bird would have
recognized the portrait.

We think we have looked at a thing sharply until we are asked for its
specific features. I thought I knew exactly the form of the leaf of the
tulip-tree, until one day a lady asked me to draw the outlines of one.
A good observer is quick to take a hint and to follow it up. Most of
the facts of nature, especially in the life of the birds and animals,
are well screened. We do not see the play because we do not look
intently enough. The other day I was sitting with a friend upon a high
rock in the woods, near a small stream, when we saw a water-snake
swimming across a pool toward the opposite bank. Any eye would have
noted it, perhaps nothing more. A little closer and sharper gaze
revealed the fact that the snake bore something in its mouth, which, as
we went down to investigate, proved to be a small catfish, three or
four inches long. The snake had captured it in the pool, and, like any
other fisherman, wanted to get its prey to dry land, although it itself
lived mostly in the water. Here, we said, is being enacted a little