300 UPLAND AND MEADOW. 



never seen them when so engaged. Prof. Riley says : 

 " The males sing during the warm, still nights of spring 

 and early summer. The song is a low, continued, rather 

 pleasant trill, quite similar to that of the common toad, 

 but more shrill ;" so many a midnight serenade I have 

 attributed to toads has doubtless been the stridulations 

 of burrowing mole-crickets. 



June 13 and 14 proved to be summer days of quite 

 another type. A cold northeast rain prevailed. Such a 

 storm comes, it is said, every summer — but it does not 

 — and, if a week earlier, is the " strav^^berry storm," if 

 later, that of some other berry. It is strange that every 

 tree, flower, bird, and bug has not its particular storm ; 

 for so frequently have names been given to changes of 

 the weather, no invidious distinctions should have been 

 made. Raspberries, blackberries, and huckleberries are 

 all very good, if not equal to strawberries — why, then, 

 not give each of them a rain also ? 



But such a storm has one pleasant feature. It leaves 

 ns just before sunset, and there is a chance to see, before 

 the day closes, what it has accomplished beyond soaking 

 the surface soil. 



During an evening stroll I passed along the main 

 ditch of the meadow and overtook a stray rauskrat. 

 There was no water here sufficiently deep to enable it 

 to swim or dive, nor any hole in the banks in which it 

 could hide. I headed it off, as it ran, in a clumsy man- 

 ner, through the shallow water and soft mud ; upon 

 which it abruptly left the ditch and in a moment hid 

 in the tall grass. I was struck by the ease with which 



