SONGLBSS BATRACHIANS. 49 



Burroughs heard was a scamp and a base deceiver. 

 He must have been swelling his throat " for the fun 

 of it," while some Pickering's Hyla was piping near 

 by ; but Burroughs not only says he saw and heard 

 this particular salamander sing, but adds that "it 

 makes more music in the woods in autumn than any 

 bird." 



Now, in all the time I have known the red sala- 

 mander — from boyhood — ^I have never heard him 

 make any kind of noise. Still, this proves nothing. 

 He may sing, and all these years I may have missed 

 the song ; but on Staten Island, in Putnam County, 

 in the Adirondacks, in the Catskills, and in New 

 England, I have frequently seen him early and late 



but otherwise much the same. On a very warm October day I 

 have heard the woods vocal with it ; it seemed to proceed from 

 every stump and tree about one. Ordinarily it is heard only at 

 intervals throughout the woods. Approach never so cautiously 

 the spot from which the sound proceeds and it instantly ceases. 

 . . . ' Is it a frog,' I said, ' the small tree frog, the piper of the 

 marshes, repeating his spring note?' . . . Doubtless it is, yet I 

 must see him in the very act. ... I heard the sound proceed 

 from beneath the leaves at my feet. Keeping entirely quiet, the 

 little musician presently emerged, and, lifting himself up on a 

 small stick, his throat palpitated, and the plaintive note again 

 came forth. . . . Jfo, it was no frog or toad at all, but the small 

 red salamander, commonly called lizard. This was the mysteri- 

 ous piper, then, heard from May till November through all our 

 woods, sometimes on trees, but usually on or near the ground. It 

 makes more music in the woods in autumn than any bird." — Pe- 

 pacton, Chapter V, John Burroughs. 

 5 



