12 THE RING OF NATURE 



the cry of ' Who goes home ? ' and led the sprawling 

 army from the water, which had thus far been the 

 only experience of many of them, up the correct 

 bank at the correct corner, over the grass, through 

 the raspberry canes, across the path, through the 

 strawberry bed, over the high bank, and down to 

 the gravel, and then across the flower-bed and into 

 the proper doorway of the stump. In the spring, 

 old Xenophon would lead his squad fresh from 

 sleep back into the pond, and then would do his 

 best to eat the eggs that were to become the recruits 

 of the army he would have to lead back to bed 

 in the autumn. Twice every year this migration 

 must have been going on for ten years, and yet 

 none of us humans had seen it or got the slightest 

 inkling of it till, the time of the stump having 

 come, w r e unearthed a part of the secret with a 

 stock-hoe. 



Everything sleeping just as much as it must. 

 Everything of no matter what low order of reptile 

 or insect intelligence having just enough to enable 

 it to choose the very best place to sleep in, or far 

 place to retire to, while the winter passes. Nothing 

 sleeping so soundly that the sun will not call 

 it up whether its waking-day be the first of 

 January or the last day of April. The animals 

 of this country, endowed as are no others with 

 the strength of constitution to endure one or two 

 false awakenings and the hunger of wakefulness 

 in cold and foodlessness. And the lord of the 

 animals, man himself, most adaptable to the 



