nothing has been permitted to obtrude into 
the picture. As in nature the infinitely 
varied manifestations of inanimate life and 
the creatures that abound in the water, on 
land and in the air are only details in the 
one universal conception of beauty. 
From the artistic standpoint the con- 
struction of the toad group, it must be 
admitted, was also a problem: to create 
with artificial (wood 
plaster, wax, glass, papier-maché, cellu- 
materials and 
loid and oil paints) an illusion so per- 
fect that the observer will be actually 
deceived as to the realness of the objects; 
then to arrange these objects in a 
There had to be 
careful handling of the colors, 
pleasing composition. 
and 
especially of the lights, and the concrete 
foreground had to be blended with the 
panoramic painted background with 
proper perspective, in order to give 
illusion as to the naturalness of the 
scene as a whole. 
The main difficulty lay in maintain- 
ing the balance, allowing nothing to take 
on ultra importance scientifically or 
pictorially, while still making the atti- 
tude or action of each of the animals the 
resultant of the demand of the location 
in the group (with consequent relations 
to neighboring animals) and the known 
habits of the species. It was at this 
point in the construction that decision 
was made to leave out or to subordinate 
in position various large enemies of 
The skunk for in- 
stance eats toads, first rolling them 
forcibly under his paws until the poison 
has been exuded from the skin glands. 
toads and frogs. 
The muskrat varies his menu in spring 
by the addition of an occasional frog or 
toad, and hawks and owls as well as 
herons and even crows are known to 
include amphibia in their diet. I have 
seen a chipmunk hastening to his bur- 
row with a woodfrog in his mouth and 
the red squirrel is very fond of meat in 
the spring after his winter on nuts and 
seeds. The only “enemies”’ of any size 
which found their way finally into the 
group are a red squirrel watching from 
the stone wall back of the apple tree, 
a water snake in the act of capturing a 
Fowler’s toad but made inconspicuous by 
a projecting moss-covered root in the 
right front of the group, and a spotted 
turtle deep in the water at the rear and 
evidently the cause of the lively scurry- 
ing of the school of pollywogs. 
It will thus be realized that in pre- 
serving the balance in the scientific, 
educational and art values of the group, 
the position of any animal is truly “stra- 
tegic,” and that its placing was not a 
simple matter and never a chance mat- 
ter, but was determined by necessity in 
the fulfillment of the various demands. 
A piece of original, complex, construc- 
165. 
