88 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
amphibious creatures they yet seek it for so short 
a period in each year, and for the rest of the time 
are practically without it! The toad comes to it 
in the love season, and at that time one is often 
astonished at the number of toads seen gathered in 
some solitary pool, where perhaps not a toad has 
been seen for months past, and with no other water 
for miles around. The fact is, the solitary pool has 
drawn to itself the entire toad population of the 
surrounding country, which may comprise an area 
of several square miles. Each toad has his own 
home or hermitage somewhere in that area, where 
he spends the greater portion of the summer season 
practically without water excepting in wet weather, 
hiding by day in moist and shady places, and 
issuing forth in the evening. And there too he 
hibernates in winter. When spring returns he sets 
out on his annual pilgrimage of a mile or two, or 
even a greater distance, travelling in the slow, 
deliberate manner of the one described, crawling 
and resting until he arrives at the sacred pool— 
his Tipperary. They arrive singly and are in 
hundreds, a gathering of hermits from the desert 
places, drunk with excitement, and filling the place 
with noise and commotion. A strange sound, when 
at intervals the leader or precentor or bandmaster 
for the moment blows himself out into a wind 
instrument—a fairy bassoon, let us say, with a 
tremble to it—and no sooner does he begin than 
a hundred more join in; and the sound, which the 
scientific books describe as “ croaking,” floats far 
