THE TOAD'S BAGPIPE 



May i 2th 



ARLY in icy March the swamps 

 sounded their first welcome to spring 

 in the shrill peep of the Hylodes, or 

 whistling frogs, and from week to 

 week since new broods of peepers 

 have come and gone, filling their brief nuptial pe- 

 riod with their own peculiar music, until the late April 

 marshes were palpitating with their teeming din. 



Among this later chorus we might have heard the 

 lingering peepers, the occasional " t-r-r-r-r-r-r-rdt " 

 of the gray tree -toad, the harsher note of the green 

 clucking frog, the spasmodic wavering croak of the 

 black- cheeked wood frog, and a certain strange shrill 

 rattle, which we may catch occasionally even now, but 

 whose animated source I have not yet satisfactorily as- 

 certained. It is a peculiarly high, vociferous, exclama- 

 tory trill, with an ascending scale and a high crescendo, 

 and may be imitated by means of that noisy toy with 

 which most boys are familiar, and which is called a "lo- 

 cust." As we used to make it, it was composed of the 

 tip of a bottle neck, or a small tin spice-box with the 

 bottom removed, having a piece of kid tightly stretched 



