264 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS 



expectant of strange sounds (a great use of 

 travel), I stepped out of my door one even- 

 ing in late April, and was hardly in the 

 street before I heard somewhere ahead of 

 me a chorus of stentorian frog-notes. " That 

 should be the spade-foot's voice," I said to 

 myself, with full conviction. I hastened 

 forward, traced the tumult to a transient 

 pool in a field, and as I n eared the place 

 picked up a board that lay in the grass, and 

 with it, by good fortune, turned the first 

 frog I came in sight of into a specimen. 

 This I sent to the batrachian specialist at 

 Cambridge, who answered me, as I knew he 

 would, that it was Scaphiopus. 



My spade-foots of yesterday morning 

 were in the same spot. I could not stay 

 then to look at them, for at that moment 

 the car came along. I left it at a favorite 

 place in the next township, and had gone a 

 mile or so on foot when from another tran- 

 sient roadside pool I heard the spade-foot's 

 voice again. This was most interesting. I 

 skirted the water, trying to get within reach 

 of one of the performers. The attempt was 

 unsuccessful ; but in the course of it I saw 



