248 Bird-Land Echoes. 



fun. I hurried to the open ground, and found a 

 broad ditch that must be crossed. By chance a 

 bared spot showed me where to pass, and it was a 

 piece of great good fortune that I had chosen the 

 path I did. A bubbhng spring here had defied all 

 the efforts of frost to hide it, and looking down into 

 the blue-black waters I found a little world as active 

 as ever in midsummer. Green grasses waved, sway- 

 ing gently to and fro, as the June breezes bend the 

 growing grain, and a few hardy fishes were astir. 

 From the depths of the pool, disturbed by the long 

 staff I carried, a spotted frog peeped out. Here, 

 then, was variety. Typical winter in every direction, 

 looking off; summer in all its glory, looking down. 

 Many such spring pools are scenes of active life the 

 winter long, but only the hunter and the fisherman 

 know about them. One old man, a turtle-hunter, 

 led me, years ago, to such a pool as this, and pointed 

 out how even the larger fish often took refuge in 

 them and that here he had sometimes found the 

 largest snappers that he ever caught, — verifying this 

 by capturing that very day as large and fierce a 

 turtle as I have ever seen. It would fill a volume 

 to write fully of a spring-pond in winter. It is one 

 of Nature's hot-houses, that has an unvarying tem- 

 perature, and so a supply of life that would go far 

 to populate the region did some catastrophe kill all 

 other life. 



And here, while basking in the winter sunshine, 

 let me repeat the legend of King Turtle as I heard 

 it from this old man of the meadows, the last of our 



