XLVII. SWIMMING HOLES 



"We two, hae paidl't i' the burn 

 From mornin' sun till dine." 



Burns (Auld Lang Syne). 



Of all elemental tastes, the liking for dabbling in water is, 

 perhaps, the most widespread. Man and beast and bird, 

 with few exceptions, love the waterside. They drink, they 

 bathe, they play there. The water is cooling and refreshing. 

 It yields cleanliness, and comfort, and pleasant recrea- 

 tion. 



Swimming is one of the most widespread accomplishments 

 in the animal world, even among terrestrial mammals. 

 Most of them swim instinctively, just as they eat or breathe. 

 Man is the only one that acquires the art by practice. For 

 nearly all others, swimming is an inherited ancestral habit, 

 that probably harks back to a remote age ; for life began 

 in the water, and the more primitive members of all the 

 great groups of animals are aquatic still. 



Certain of our wild semi-aquatic mammals, like the otter 

 and the mink, swim and dive and play in the water with an 

 ease and a grace and an abandon that are delightful. Their 

 agility almost equals that of fishes. Young otters are re- 

 ported to chase each other down slides in the banks, like 

 boys in a swimming hole. But our domesticated beasts 

 rarely swim voluntarily. They prefer merely to dabble in 

 the edge of the water, enjoying its coolness and a certain 

 protection it affords from flies. Hogs wallow and smear 

 themselves with mud. The American bison did likewise. 

 Cows stand in the water in fly-time, with their thin-skinned 

 under parts immersed, and their tails flinging spray over 

 their backs. This sort of installment shower-bath does good 

 in two ways. When it wets the wings of flies, it puts them 



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