A SHARP LOOKOUT. 17 



also begun to predict. Surely, I thought, this frog 

 knows what it is about; here is the wisdom of na- 

 ture; it would have gone deeper into the ground 

 than that if a severe winter was approaching ; so I 

 was not anxious about my coal-bin, nor disturbed by 

 longings for Florida. But what a winter followed, 

 the winter of 1885, when the Hudson became coated 

 with ice nearly two feet thick, and when March was 

 as cold as January. I thought of my frog under the 

 hemlock and wondered how it was faring. So one 

 day the latter part of March, when the snow was 

 gone, and there was a feeling of spring in the air, 

 I turned aside in my walk to investigate it. The 

 matted leaves were still frozen hard, but I succeeded 

 in lifting them up and exposing the frog. There it 

 sat as fresh and unscathed as in the fall. The ground 

 beneath and all about it was still frozen like a rock, 

 but apparently it had some means of its own of re- 

 sisting the frost. It winked and bowed its head when 

 I touched it, but did not seem inclined to leave its 

 retreat. Some days later, after the frost was nearly 

 all out of the ground, I passed that way, and found 

 my frog had come out of its seclusion and was rest- 

 ing amid the dry leaves. There was not much jump 

 in it yet, but its color was growing lighter. A few 

 more warm days and its fellows, and doubtless itself 

 too, were croaking and gamboling in the marslies. 



This incident convinced me of two things ; namely, 

 that frogs know no more about the coming weather 

 than we do, and that they do not retreat as deep into 



