SWIMMING HOLES 



313 



temporarily out of commission; and when the water evap- 

 orates, its effect is cooHng on the cow's skin. 



The song-birds, also, have their bathing places. We 

 walk up a small rivulet on a hot day, and cautiously approach 

 its pools, and there we find the robins and the sparrows 

 and other birds at their aquatic sports. Standing singly or 

 by twos and threes in the shoal water, they create a great 

 shower with the flutter of their wings. And this they do at 

 great personal risk; for cats and other enemies may be 



lurking in the shrubbcr\' 

 that grows beside the 

 pools . One of the ways 

 to conserve the birds 

 is to provide them with 

 safe water fountains. 



Man is imitative far 

 beyond every other 

 creature, and especially 

 so in youth. It is 

 natural, therefore, that 

 he should enter the 

 water and try to do 

 there, even though clumsily, what he sees other creatures 

 doing. Once in the new medium, and used to its coolness 

 and its buoyancy, the boy begins to try the tricks of the 

 swimming-things about him. The dog swims in one way, 

 and he imitates that. The frog swims in another way, and 

 he imitates that. And then he begins to invent new ways 

 of his own. 



The greatest social center in Boyville is the swimming 

 hole. Its popularity is undoubted. Its resources are in- 

 exhaustible. It is democratic beyond most of our institu- 

 tions. It isn't much of a place to look at, as a rule — just a 

 bit of open water, a pond, or a pool in the creek, with broad 



Fig. 137. A floating birds' bath on a pond: out 

 of the way of cats. 



