It was, in fact, this occurrence which had given him his hobby.
The young man had a specialty.

He had several specialties, but to one yielded all the rest.

He had an eye to chipmunks, and had made most inefficient traps for them and hoped some day to catch one, but they were nothing to speak of.

As for the minnows in the creek, had he not caught one with a dipper once, and had he not almost hit a big pickerel with a stone?
He knew where the liverwort and anemones grew most thickly in the spring and had gathered fragrant bunches of them daily, and he knew, too, of a hollow where there had been a snowy sheet of winter-green blossoms earlier, and where there would soon be an abundance of red berries such as his mother liked.

At beech-nut gathering, in the season, he admitted no superior.