WATER-LIZARDS AND THEIR ILK. 109 



The truth dawned upon me. That fellow was 

 smarter than I had thought. He did know the 

 difference between the cultivated raspberry and 

 the wild kind of blackberry. He did not like the 

 raspberry. Hoping that he would not oblige me 

 to journey to the brook for his food, I gave him 

 a shoot of wild blackberry that I had kept in a 

 pail for the needs of any of my menagerie. 



Frog-hopper did not like the looks of my pres- 

 ent. He had never been taught the polite truth 

 embodied in the maxim that one should not look 

 a gift-horse in the mouth. That part of Frog- 

 hopper's education had been neglected. He 

 looked over my shoot but did not offer to make 

 any froth. It was quite apparent that the shoot 

 was not fresh enough to suit him, and he was 

 waiting to have a better one appear. Overawed 

 by his wisdom in regard to blackberry shoots, I 

 put on my hat, snatched the scissors, hastened to 

 the creek, swung myself under a fence, and, in 

 spite of the proximity of a number of boys, se- 

 cured my fresh wild-blackberry shoots, and came 

 home. 



That was exactly what Frog -hopper wanted, 

 and, after considerable delay, he proceeded to 

 bury himself in foam, and succeeded so well that 

 at about half -past nine P. M., when I gave him a 

 farewell look for the night, all that could be dis- 

 tinctly seen of him was a little black dot, a por- 

 tion of the hinder end of the body. All the rest 

 was covered in the foam. 



