3IO 



NATURAL HISTOkY (>F THE FARM 



\\'herc burrowing cra\\^shcs abound, their holes will be 

 found — some of them capped over with mud chimneys since 

 the drought began. We can test the dej^th to wliich the 

 water-level in the soil lias descended by probing the craw- 

 fish holes with a stick. 



Where we lose the channel of the brook, 

 as we pass out into a small grassy flood-plain, 

 we find that though there is no water in sight, 

 there is moisture in the soil. Such soil-gather- 

 ing tilings as the fowl-meadow-grass (fig. 135) 

 are making the most of the situation; they are 

 covering the plain with a tangle of stems that 

 will strain out of subsequent floods their burden 

 of silt and trash. Thus will the plain be built 

 a little higher; another la>'cr will be added to 

 form rich moisture -holding soil. 



By the side of the brook gone dry, nature 

 sets us exami)les in the conservation of 

 moisture. There we may find plants bunied 

 to death with the drouth; otlicrs of the same 

 species wilted sadly, but still alive; and others, 

 green and flourishing. The dilTcrences are 

 mainly due to the disposition of the soil about 

 their roots; soil hard and bare in the first case, 

 and well adapted to facilitate loss of water; 

 and loose soil well co\-ercd from the sun in 

 the last case, and full of rescr^'e moisture. 



Somewhere, along our brook, we may come upon a reedy 

 swale now dry enough to walk across, but never dry enough 

 for field-crops, and therefore left unmolested by the plow. 

 It is apt to be filled with sedges and marsh fenis, with a 

 few cat-tails in the wettest spots, and to have round alnjut, 

 a fringe of moisture -loving composites such as boncsct, joc- 

 pye weed, swamp-milkweed, goldenrod and New England 



Fig. 136. Fruit- 

 ing panicle of 

 the fowl-mead- 

 ow-grass. 



