178 DATS OUT OF DOORS. 



chians are much alike in this respect, seemingly taking it 

 for granted that they were born to be eaten, and stuff 

 themselves until fate wills it that they go to stuff others. 

 There is an exception to this that deserves mention — all 

 these creatures have a wholesome dread of snakes — but 

 the common hop-toad is the greatest coward. Frogs hop 

 away as fast as they can go ; but the toad will squeal as 

 he hurries off, and cries most piteously the moment the 

 snake's teeth pierce his wrinkled skin. But I am scarcely 

 wrong so far as frogs are concerned. I have seen little 

 fellows, just from the tadpole state, in dangerous prox- 

 imity to patriarchal bull-frogs, which were then only wait- 

 ing for their appetites to return to swallow a half-dozen 

 of their own grandchildren. It is strange that infantile 

 frogs should have an instinctive fear of snakes, and yet 

 none of their greater enemies, the adults of their own 

 race. 



As I disturbed the frogs, all took refuge in the water 

 beneath the wheel, and then worked their way down 

 stream toward the outer world. I followed, but without 

 creeping under the wheel, and found where I little ex- 

 pected it a positively cool and yet not superlatively damp 

 retreat. The sparkling water ran over a pebbly channel, 

 shut in from the direct sunlight by a swinging gate, a half- 

 circle in shape, which nearly closed the great stone arch 

 in thp mill's foundation wall. Here I sat down to watch, 

 not only the frogs, but a whole host of little fishes, and 

 soon found that my discovery of this truly pleasant place 

 was an old story with the birds. This sheltered, hidden, 

 half-dark mill-race was their favorate bathing-place. 



A fearless wren was the first to appear ; then a song- 

 sparrow; then several barn-swallows; and finally a cat-bird. 

 Except the swallows — which, perhaps, did not actually 

 bathe, although they dipped into the ripple — ^these birds, 

 as bathers, are very much alike, the wren, strangely enough, 



