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 ephemere 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 cgne-head 
