2 FAMILIAR LIFE IN FIELD AND FOREST. 



is a imiskrat busily engaged in gnawing a tender 

 twig, all impatience and hurry ; possibly the creature 

 is building a nest. As we wander along a little far- 

 ther a little green snake in the new grass glides out 

 of our path. But we pass on ; we must reach the 

 hollow in the meadow where strange, shrill voices 

 are piping in a chorus more deafening than the ves- 

 per hymn of the million sparrows which congregate 

 on the bare twigs of the trees in the old graveyard 

 of King's Chapel, in Boston, at five in the afternoon. 



At last we reach the grassy margin of a shallow 

 pool, only to find — nothing ! And somehow we have 

 succeeded in silencing the innumerable voices. Ap- 

 parently there is nothing to do but to sit down on 

 the end of a neighboring log and patiently wait. 

 Soon a venturesome peeper begins again ; then an- 

 other, and another, until in about ten minutes the 

 chorus is going again full blast. It proceeds from a 

 hundred little throats of frogs less than an inch long, 

 all but invisible in the shallow pool. 



Hyla picJceringii — for this is the name of the 

 noisy creature — is a familiar representative of the 

 Ilylidce family, and is the earliest piper of spring in 

 the cold bogs and meadows of the hill country. Far- 

 ther south the rattling note of the cricket frog is 

 heard quite as early, and even that of the common 

 toad. But Pickering's Hyla starts in with emphatic 



