AN OLD APPLE TREE 



19 



is stranger still to think of them together; for it is 

 just such prey as this little toad that the owl has 

 gone over the meadow to catch. 



Why does he not take the supper ready here on 

 the shelf? There may be reasons that we, who do 

 not eat tree-toad, know nothing of ; but I am inclined 

 to believe that the owl has never seen his fellow 

 lodger in the doorway above, though he must often 

 have heard him trilling gently and lonesomely in the 

 gloaming, when his skin cries for rain! 



Small wonder if they have never met ! for this 

 gray, squat, disk-toed little monster in the hole, or 

 flattened on the bark of the tree like a patch of li- 

 chen, may well be one of the things that are hidden 

 from even the sharp-eyed owl. It is always a source of 

 fresh amazement, the way that this largest of the 

 hylas, on the moss-marked rind of an old tree, can 

 utterly blot himself out before your staring eyes. 



The common toads and all the frogs have enemies 

 enough, and it would seem from the comparative 

 scarcity of the tree-toads that they must have en- 

 emies, too ; but I do not know who they are. This 

 scarcity of the tree-toads is something of a puzzle, 

 and all the more to me, that, to my certain knowl- 

 ,edge, this toad has lived in the old Baldwin tree, 

 now, for five years. Perhaps he has been several 

 J toads, you say, not one; for who can tell one tree- 

 toad from another ? Nobody ; and for that reason I 

 made, some time ago, a simple experiment, in order 





