A YEAR IN THE FIELDS 



fact that the kind of food and the tempera- 

 ture of the fall make the pork hard or make 

 it soft. So with a hundred other signs, all 

 the result of hasty and incomplete observa- 

 tions. 



One season, the last day of December 

 was very warm. The bees were out of the 

 hive, and there was no frost in the air or in 

 the ground. I was walking in the woods, 

 when as I paused in the shade of a hemlock- 

 tree I heard a sound proceed from beneath 

 the wet leaves on the ground but a few feet 

 from me that suggested a frog. Following 

 it cautiously up, I at last determined upon 

 the exact spot from whence the sound is- 

 sued ; lifting up the thick layer of leaves, 

 there sat a frog — the wood frog, one of 

 the first to appear in the marshes in spring, 

 and which I have elsewhere called the 

 " clucking frog " — in a little excavation in 

 the surface of the leaf-mould. As it sat 

 there the top of its back was level with the 

 surface of the ground. This, then, was its 

 hibernaculum ; here it was prepared to pass 

 the winter, with only a coverlid of wet 

 matted leaves between it and zero weather. 

 Forthwith I set up as a prophet of warm 

 weather, and among other things predicted 

 196 



