16 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



but its color was growing lighter. A few more 

 warm days, and its fellows, and doubtless itself too, 

 were croaking and gamboling in the marshes. 



This incident convinced me of two things; 

 namely, that frogs know no more about the coming 

 weather than we do, and that they do not retreat 

 as deep into the ground to pass the winter as has 

 been supposed. I used to think the muskrats could 

 foretell an early and a severe winter, and have so 

 written. But I am now convinced they cannot; 

 they know as little about it as I do. Sometimes 

 on an early and severe frost they seem to get 

 alarmed and go to building their houses, but usually 

 they seem to build early or late, high or low, just 

 as the whim takes them. 



In most of the operations of nature there is at 

 least one unknown quantity; to find the exact value 

 of this unknown factor is not so easy. The wool 

 of the sheep, the fur of the animals, the feathers of 

 the fowls, the husks of the maize, why are they 

 thicker some seasons than others; what is the value 

 of the unknown quantity here? Does it indicate 

 a severe winter approaching? Only observations 

 extending over a series of years could determine 

 the point. How much patient observation it takes 

 to settle many of the facts in the lives of the birds, 

 animals, and insects! Gilbert White was all his 

 life trying to determine whether or not swallows 

 passed the winter in a torpid state in the mud at 

 the bottom of ponds and marshes, and he died igno- 

 rant of the truth that they do not. Do honey-bees 



