ming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt, and the water." The Frenchmen are more particular, and if a frog is not a "red-legger" it is not salable to them.

So are the boys driven to using their eyes in picking out their wares, for it would be a sorry thing indeed to carry the wrong objects several miles and then be met with a flat denial of money in return for them.

It is said that the old, bald, wrinkled Paul of Russia, who was so ugly that he did not dare put his countenance on his coin, issued a proclamation prohibiting, under penalty of killing by the knout, any one of his subjects from making use of the expression "bald," in speaking of the head, or "snubbed," in referring to the nose. And, moreover, the same gentleman, with the characteristic fear of the Czars, forbade the academy to use the word “revolution" in speaking of the courses of the stars.

I suppose there are tabooed subjects of conversation with all persons, and I should think that the special objects to be avoided in conversing with frogs would be "boys" and "Frenchmen."

A little Portuguese boy that I found several days after my conversation with the boy who had the dogs gave me a much more moderate estimate of the length of water-snakes than the former boy had given. The little Portuguese said that the snakes went "down in the mud."

But I came to the conclusion that perhaps he hardly knew the creatures after all. His face expressed a doubt of himself, although he asserted that the snakes were in the other creek. He had seen them there. Another boy with him volunteered the guess that they caught "fish and things."

In like manner did I hear a vague rumor from one boy of a kind of bug, in the other creek, that "had horns behind." Taking the peculiar description that the boy did his best to give me, I should judge that he meant the kind of Waterscorpions that bear breathing-tubes behind like Ranatra. There are no such Scorpions in this brook, I believe. In all my dredging I have never found any of that tube-bearing variety, Nepa, in this stream. Probably, from the peculiar manner in which the scorpions of this brook carry their eggs, the creatures belong to the genus

Belostoma.

66

There is a great clump of the white - veined thistle opposite the willows. There in a thistleleaf I once found the caterpillar of the butterfly known as the " Painted Lady," Pyrameis cardui. The Lady preferred living alone, as all her folks do. In one spiny leaf she had made a little web, and an intruder had to break into her home to examine her, since she had drawn the two sides of the leaf partly together. I bore the Lady home, and heroically pricked my fingers many a time

in obtaining her food. She did not seem very friendly. I do not see how any one who fed on such very spiny thistles could be.

But she grew at a startling rate, and, one June day, relieved me from making any more trips to thistle-bushes by turning herself into an angular brown chrysalis, adorned with golden tubercles. She lived in this style while I packed her up and took her with me on a journey of a hundred and twenty-five miles. Then, one July day, the joints of my Lady's chrysalis began to look juicy, and great wriggling took place. My Painted Lady came out of retirement gorgeous in coloring. One evening, taking my Lady, I walked out into the forest, and having found Achilles in the shape of his namesake the white yarrow, Achillea, I laid my Lady at the feet of the gallant Grecian for protection. My Lady clung to my finger as though loath to part from me, but she was soon made to understand that separation was inevitable, and she subsided under the yarrow leaves. There, as she held up her wings, all her brilliant colors were hidden, and the gray under-surface was so much like the general gray shade of the yarrow leaves and the grasses that I could but just distinguish her as I stood up. So she nestled down at Achilles' feet for the night, and I saw her no more. Perhaps, in her flittings through the pine-woods of that hamlet by the sea, she has ere this found her destined mate, a butterfly that

would never have had a chance to see my Lady had I not been the cause.

Another companion that I took on my journey was a female "Tussock Moth," Orgyia. She had no wings, as the lady-moths of her variety do not fly. One can find the Orgyia caterpillars in this district, though not in great numbers. They are pretty creatures, small, with four gray tufts

on their backs like a camel's hump, and the gray hair hangs over their heads like bangs. The segments are marked with red and yellow, but the most conspicuous things about these caterpillars are the long tufts of black hairs. One stands out on either side of a caterpillar's head like antennæ, and another such shoot adorns the end of his body.

I fed mine on apple-leaves, and it was on such a leaf that one made a thin, fuzzy, light-grayish

Cocoon.

tennæ of the Orgyia, and grayish wings, brown underneath, made a hole in one end of his cocoon

so neatly that a person looking at the cocoon would not have known that the moth had come out.

It seems strange to see a moth without wings. These lady-moths lead very stupid lives, hardly

Winged male Moth.

Orgyia leucostigma.

Wingless Female Moth.
Orgyia leucostigma.

stirring from their places during their whole existence, sometimes, and consequently it was a