NIGHT WITCHERY. 55 



my shrinking ear, " Chick whew ! get away !" like a very goblin ; 

 for there seemed no possible perch upon which the bird could 

 have rested, and I failed to discern a flutter of feather. 



With the exception of the katydids and the throbbing lyres 

 of vesper tree-crickets or an occasional tree -toad, the woods, 

 however, are usually comparatively silent at night. It is in the 

 wet lowlands where we find the chief nocturnal activity. The 

 midnight summer swamp or marshy -bordered pond is literally 

 palpitating with a life unknown to sunlight ; the rippling moon 

 dancing a filigree attendance among the reeds, and speeding in 

 wavy chase across the deeps peopled now with pouts and eels 

 which the daylight angler would have sought in vain. The liz- 

 ards' tails (Saururus) shake their drooping plumes with a tremor 

 all inconsistent with the listless breeze. The pickerel -weeds stir 

 with submerged life, and the quivering tips of the reeds betray 

 the rude progress of the turtles towards the shore as they seek 

 the sandy banks to pile their nests of eggs. The placid sleep of 

 the pond is vexed with multitudinous tickle, marked by the span- 

 gling touches of the moonlight insect broods ; of fluttering caddis- 

 flies now making their first essay with their new-found satin 

 wings, emerging by the legion from their water- baskets or crystal 

 mosaic tubes everywhere among the bordering shallows, while myr- 

 iad ephemerae spread their pallid wings and dance their midnight 

 revels, making merry through their short sunless day of life which 

 perchance ends with the dawn. The musk-rat or the mink leads 

 a long, silent, glittering trail across the glassy water, or with a 

 splash at the brink sets the lily- pads and spatter-docks in gliding 

 dance on the ripples, and starts upon their telltale chase across 

 the pond a hundred gleaming circles at whose common centre, 

 though hid in verdurous gloom at the bank, a random rifle-ball 

 would surely win its sleek and dripping quarry, now crouched in 

 muddy tracks with luckless prey of frog or tadpole. 



What with the tremulous drool of the toads and the sprightly 

 pipes of the hyla tree -toads here celebrating their nuptials in 

 their native element, or, later, the trump and splash of the bull- 

 frog, together with the rasping accompaniment of the cone-head 



