BANKS OF THE GREAT RIVER. 
89 
watches the gray solitary heron. A flock of teal 
settles clown in the water, and the sparkling surface 
of the river is dotted with brown-sailed junks. A 
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vole or field-mouse sometimes runs across your 
path, or the gliding form of a snake is seen vanish- 
ing in the grass. 
Towarcls evening, frogs are demonstrative, croak- 
ing loudly and without cessation, and leaping 
by hundreds down the banks of the dykes and 
streams. Now these merry batrachians arc good 
for ducks, and Chinamen arc particularly fond 
of Jut ducks. The natural result is that, at 
this “ witching hour of night,” silent boys and old 
patient men are seen in these frog -haunted pre- 
cincts, a long bamboo rod in their hand, and a 
string baited with a worm, angling for frogs ! In 
my homeward walks, when the brown owl swooped 
down and settled on the cotton fields, and the huge 
black shard-beetle flew across my face, I often fell 
in with an old, man bending under the weight of a 
hamper of frogs, the produce of his evening s 
