190 UPLAND AND MEADOW. 



row deeply, and then build high towers above their 

 homes beneath the sod. We found that many had set- 

 tled down quite near the open ditches, and were too 

 cunning for us; and, long before we could reach them 

 by way of their front doors, they had quietly slipped 

 through a rear entrance into the open water and were 

 gone. But this safe method was not employed by all. 

 Others trusted to luck or the tall grass, and, believing 

 no marauder would disturb them, had homes hundreds 

 of yards from any ditch or other open water. Patient 

 search finally rewarded us. Finding two mud towers, 

 we dug beneath them, following the narrow, tortuous 

 burrow leading to the terminal chamber, or home. This, 

 in each case, was just at the water-line, and the animal, 

 therefore, was either partly or wholly submerged, as it 

 chose. This terminal compartment — it cannot be called 

 a nest — was an oval expansion of the burrow leading to 

 it, and measured, approximately, two inches in its long 

 diameter, and half that transversely. 



What, in such a place, did this crayfish find to eat ? 

 Whether carnivorous or, as my companion thinks, a 

 vegetable feeder, it certainly finds no food in such a lo- 

 cality ; and yet, once settled in these burrows, those 

 crayfish do not appear ever to leave them. There 

 are no marks of travel at the summits of the towers, 

 no tell-tale refuse -heaps in their burrows or about 

 them. 



There is much yet to be learned of its habits, as of 

 many another common animal. 



Interested as we really were to-day, we could not con- 

 tinue the investigation ; we were bent on other pur- 



