WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



rice and luxuriant water-weeds so dense and tall as 

 to be impenetrable even to a canoe. Here blooms 

 the magnificent lotus (Neliirnhiuni luteiim), with 

 its corolla as large as your hat and its leaf half 

 a boat-length broad — great banks of it, giving 

 out a faint, sweet, soporific, almost intoxicating 

 odor. 



Curious sounds reach you as you thread the 

 mazes of the swamp. The water boils up from 

 the oozy bottom, and the bubbles break at the 

 surface with a faint, lisping sound; the reeds 

 softly rattle against one another like the rustle of 

 heavy silks, and you can hear the lily-pads and 

 deeply anchored stems of the water-weeds rubbing 

 against one another. More articulate noises strike 

 your ear — the sharp, clucking lectures on propriety 

 of the mud - hen to its young ; the hrek-kek-kek , 

 coaz-coaz of the frog; the splash of a tumbling 

 turtle; the rushing of a flock of startled ducks 

 rising on swift wings; the sprightly, contagious 

 laughter of those little elves, the marsh-wrens, 

 teetering on the elastic leaves of the cat's-tails. 



Never absent from such a reedy picture are the 

 blackbirds, especially the redwing, whose favorite 

 resort is where the rushes grow most densely, 

 among which he places his nest. The little swales 



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