puddle, the home of countless hylas until the 

 June suns dry it up. Among the hundred or 

 more people who live in the vicinity and who 

 pass the pond almost daily, I think that I am 

 the only one who, until recently, was sure he 

 had ever seen a peeper, and knew that they were 

 neither tadpoles, salamanders, nor turtles. As 

 I was standing by the puddle, one May day, a 

 good neighbor came along and stopped with me. 

 The chorus was in full blast cricket-frogs, Pick- 

 ering's frogs, spring frogs, and, leading them all, 

 the melancholy quaver of Bufo, the " hop-toad." 



"What is it that makes the dreadful noise?" 

 my neighbor asked, meaning, I knew, by "dread- 

 ful noise," the song of the toad. I handed her 

 my opera-glass, pointed out the minstrel with the 

 doleful bagpipe sprawling at the surface of the 

 water, and, after sixty years of wondering, she 

 saw with immense satisfaction that one part in 

 this familiar spring medley was taken by the 

 common toad. 



Sixty springs are a good many springs to be 



finding out the author of so well-known a sound 



as this woeful strain of the serenading toad ; but 



more than half a century might be spent in 



[302] 



