A COTTON PLANTATION. 185 



quibbles apart, one thing I do remember : I 

 sat for some time on the fence, in the shade 

 of a tree, with an eye upon the cane-swamp 

 and an ear open for bird-voices. Yes, and 

 it comes to me at this moment that here I 

 heard the first and only bull-frog that I heard 

 anywhere in Florida. It was like a voice 

 from home, and belonged with the fence. 

 Other frogs I had heard in other places. 

 One chorus brought me out of bed in Day- 

 tona in the evening after a succession 

 of February dog-day showers. " What is 

 that noise outside ? " I inquired of the laud- 

 lady as I hastened downstairs. "That?" 

 said she, with a look of amusement ; " that 's 

 frogs." "It may be," I thought, but I 

 followed the sounds till they led me in the 

 darkness to the edge of a swamp. No doubt 

 the creatures were frogs, but of some kind 

 new to me, with voices more lugubrious 

 and homesick than I should have supposed 

 could possibly belong to any batrachian. A 

 week or two later, in the New Smyrna flat- 

 woods, I heard in the distance a sound which 

 I took for the grunting of pigs. I made 

 a note of it, mentally, as a cheerful token, 

 indicative of a probable scarcity of rattle- 



