Does not the bayberry revive and exhilarate the walker, as smelling-salts restore fainting women? You have but to roll the waxen berry in the fingers, or crush the leaf, to feel that indefinable thrill which belongs to the woods, to the open air--the free life. Another vigorous and stimulating odor is the fragrance of green butternuts, which contains the goodness, the sweetness, the very marrow of the woods, and calls out the natural and unaffected, as a strain of music arouses the heroic. The tartness of the barberry matches the crispness of the air and rebukes the lack of vigor in us. No true child can resist the lure of wintergreen berries, while to nibble the bark of a fresh young sassafras shoot admits us to some closer association with Nature. A whiff of balsam is an invitation to share the abandon of the woods, and awakens memories of the halcyon days, the shining hours, when nutting and berrying were the real things of life. One who is possessed with the idea of finding a certain bird or plant is in a fair way to the discovery, and sooner or later each will come into the field of vision. How the robin discovers the worm is a mystery to be explained on the score of _attention_; it is perfect concentration on a single point, with faculties trained in that direction. That the footsteps of ants were audible had not occurred to me till one day in watching the progress of the annual raid of the red ants upon the black colonies, I plainly heard the patter of their feet, as the column marched at double-quick over the floor of dry leaves. There are many sounds in Nature that only become evident when we give absolute attention, when we become all ear,--as there are things seen only when we become for the time an eye. Sensitive and sympathetic natures rarely confuse one person with another, whereas the cold or obtuse really never see the finer distinctions in a face. They make poor observers. Any one unacquainted with birds will show by an attempted description that he has not in the least seen the bird. I have known old lumbermen who had not noticed the difference in the needles of the species of pine, nor the leaves of oaks; but they knew the difference in the quality of the wood well enough, because that appealed to their interest and held their attention. Preparedness adds zest to the walk and enriches it, precisely as a broad culture and a fund of information enlarge the view of the traveler. Notwithstanding what may be in the woods, it takes some understanding and some interest to see it. An unprepared person will see little; an uninterested person will see nothing. To many of the villagers the wood-lot is a remote and unfamiliar wilderness, and the warblers and vireos as unknown as any tropic bird. We should at least know the kinglets by their caste-mark--whether it be red or yellow--and the oriole by the colors of his ancient line.