16 GLEANINGS FROM NATURE. 



the shelving banks and in the still waters of the 

 deeper pools, they make their summer homes. 



Frogs are among the best of weather prophets. 

 They seem to know intuitively when the spring is 

 full on its way. Long before the frost is wholly out 

 of the ground the sluggish blood within their veins 

 begins to tingle, and they greet the first dawn of 

 spring with a mighty chorus a blare of welcoming 

 trumpets, as it were in which the bull-frog furnishes 

 the bass and the little cricket frog or " peeper," Acris 

 gryllus crepitans Baird, the shrill whistling tenor, i^o 

 sound of nature so loudly or so surely proclaims the 

 advent of spring as this full symphony of frog music 

 heard from some woodland pond. 



The arrival of the first migrant birds is also a sure 

 symbol of the coming spring. About 180 species pass 

 northward through Indiana between February 15 and 

 the 10th of May. In addition to these at least seven- 

 ty-five kinds stop in the State and nest and rear their 

 young. Wild geese and ducks are the first ones to 

 be seen northward bound. Impelled by the pairing 

 instincts, thousands of squads of these water birds 

 start in February from the sunny lakes and lagoons 

 of the South for the still cold and cheerless breeding 

 grounds that extend from the Northern States through 

 British America to the Arctic seas. The AVI Id geese 

 fly, as is well kno\vn, in a V-shaped line, Avith the 

 apex forward. Their leader is a strong-winged gan- 

 der, who keeps his place at the point of the V, and 

 the clarion-toned "honk" with AA T hich he giA^es his 

 orders is the first note of that coming bird chorus, 

 which, starting from the gulf, will, with the south 



