The Hoptoad’s Ways 
particularly in gardens, where he feeds on some forms of 
animal life injurious to vegetation. The common species 
of America is somewhat less warty than his European 
cousin, and, as becomes a true American, hops faster. 
June 5 .—May was a fretful month this year in our 
latitude, breaking easily into tears, and winter, lingering, 
chilled her lap; but because of the wet and cold, she has 
left to June such a heritage of lush green as otherwise 
would not have been. The intense richness of this green 
which is now upon wood and field and roadside is full of 
variety; it ranges in tone from a suggestion of yellow, as in 
the foliage of the buttonwoods, to a shade that is all but 
blue in some of the conifers. The eye that is weary with 
traveling the barren sands of cash books and ledgers turns 
to this living page and finds perfect restfulness. 
Most people who think themselves fond of nature yet 
make the mistake of keeping too much indoors when it 
rains. If you have mackintosh and rubbers you are 
weather-proof, and it is not meet that the ducks should 
put a man to shame. On a moist day this time of year 
the country is one great bouquet of subtle odors, through 
which your individual speck of humanity threads its way 
like a bug in a posy. To say nothing of flowers, there 
is the earthy fragrance of the fresh furrows in the fields; 
by the roadside, the aroma of mint and sweetbrier; in 
the woods, the breath of sweet cicely and spicewood and 
wild ginger. Crush a sassafras leaf or run your hand 
along a hickory branch and you liberate such odors as 
transport you in a twinkling to the shores of Araby the 
Blest or the Spice Islands. 
[57] 
