PEPACTON 



heard only at intervals throughout the woods. 

 Approach never so cautiously the spot from which 

 the sound proceeds, and it instantly ceases, and 

 you may watch for an hour without again hear- 

 ing it. Is it a frog, I said, the small tree-frog, the 

 piper of the marshes, repeating his spring note, 

 but little changed, amid the trees ? Doubtless it is, 

 yet I must see him in the very act. So I watched 

 and waited, but to no purpose, till one day, while 

 bee-hunting in the woods, I heard the sound pro- 

 ceed from beneath the leaves at my feet. Keep- 

 ing entirely quiet, the little musician presently 

 emerged, and, lifting himself up on a small stick, 

 his throat palpitated and the plaintive note again 

 came forth. " The queerest frog ever I saw," said 

 a youth who accompanied me, and whom I had 

 enlisted to help solve the mystery. No ; it was no 

 frog or toad at all, but the small red salamander, 

 commonly called lizard. The color is not strictly 

 red, but a dull orange, variegated with minute 

 specks or spots. This was the mysterious piper, 

 then, heard from May till November through all 

 our woods, sometimes on trees, but usually on or 

 near the ground. It makes more music in the woods 

 in autumn than any bird. It is a pretty, inoffensive 

 creature, walks as awkwardly as a baby, and may 

 often be found beneath stones and old logs in the 

 woods, where, buried in the mould, it passes the 

 winter. (I suspect there is a species of little frog 

 128 



