Over thirty years ago a writer on flying-machines had this to say about the flight of sea-gulls: "Sweeping around in circles, occasionally elevating themselves by a few flaps of the wings, they glide down and up the aerial inclines without apparently any effort whatever. But a close observation will show that at every turn the angle of inclination of the wings is changed to meet the new conditions. There is continual movement with power--by the bird it is done instinctively, by our machine only through mechanism obeying a mind not nearly so well instructed." The albatross will follow a ship at sea, sailing round and round, in a brisk breeze, on unbending wing, only now and then righting itself with a single flap of its great pinions. It literally rides upon the storm. IV BIRD INTIMACIES When, as sometimes happens, I feel an inclination to seek out new lands in my own country, or in other countries, to see what Nature is doing there, and what guise she wears, something prompts me to pause, and after a while to say to myself: "Look a little closer into the nature right at your own door; do a little intensive observation at home, and see what that yields you. The enticement of the far-away is mostly in your imagination; let your eyes and your imagination play once more on the old familiar birds and objects." One season in my walks to the woods I was on the lookout for a natural bracket among the tree-branches, to be used in supporting a book-shelf. I did not find it; but one day in a shad-blow tree, within a few feet from the corner of my own house, I found what I was searching for, perfect in every particular--the right angle and the supporting brace, or hypothenuse. It gave me a hint I have not forgotten. I find that one has only to overcome a little of his obtuseness and indifference and look a little more closely upon the play of wild life about him to realize how much interesting natural history is being enacted every day before his very eyes--in his own garden and dooryard and apple-orchard and vineyard. If one's mind were only alert and sensitive enough to take it all in! Whether one rides or walks or sits under the trees, or loiters about the fields or woods, the play of wild life is going on about him, and, if he happens to be blessed with the seeing eye and the hearing ear, is available for his instruction and entertainment. On every farm in the land a volume of live natural history goes to waste every year because there is no historian to note the happenings.