ays, and its fellows,
and doubtless itself too, were croaking and gamboling in the marshes.

This incident convinced me of two things; namely, that frogs know no
more about the coming weather than we do, and that they do not retreat
as deep into the ground to pass the winter as has been supposed. I
used to think the muskrats could foretell an early and a severe
winter, and have so written. But I am now convinced they cannot; they
know as little about it as I do. Sometimes on an early and severe
frost they seem to get alarmed and go to building their houses, but
usually they seem to build early or late, high or low, just as the
whim takes them.

In most of the operations of nature there is at least one unknown
quantity; to find the exact value of this unknown factor is not so
easy. The wool of the sheep, the fur of the animals, the feathers of
the fowls, the husks of the maize, why are they thicker some seasons
than others; what is the value of the unknown quantity her? Does it
indicate a severe winter approaching? Only observations extending over
a series of years could determine the point. How much patient
observation it takes to settle many of the facts in the lives of the
birds, animals, and insects! Gilbert White was all his life trying to
determine whether or not swallows passed the winter in a torpid state
in the mud at the bottom of ponds and marshes, and he died ignorant of
the truth that they do not. Do honey-bees injure the grape and other
fruits by puncturing the skin for the juice? The most patient watching
by many skilled eyes all over the country has not yet settled the
point. For my own part, I am convinced that they do not. The honey-bee
is not the rough-and-ready freebooter that the wasp and bumblebee are;
she has somewhat of feminine timidity, and leaves the first rude
assaults to them. I knew the honey-bee was very fond of the locust
blossoms, and that the trees hummed like a hive in the height of their
flowering, but I did not know that the bumblebee was ever the sapper
and miner that went ahead in this enterprise, till one day I placed
myself amid the foliage of a locust and saw him savagely bite through
the shank of the flower and extract the nectar, followed by a
honey-bee that in every instance searched for this opening, and probed
long and carefully for the leavings of her burly purveyor. The
bumblebee rifles the dicentra and the columbine of their treasures in
the same manner, namely, by slit