ng pigs, bathing with great
show of comfort and rubbing themselves dry against rough-barked trees!

Some of our own species seem fairly to dread the touch of water. When
the necessity of absolute cleanliness by means of frequent baths was
being preached by a friend who had been reading Combe's Physiology, in
which he had learned something of the wonders of the skin with its
millions of pores that had to be kept open for health, one of our
neighbors remarked: "Oh! that's unnatural. It's well enough to wash in
a tub maybe once or twice a year, but not to be paddling in the water
all the time like a frog in a spring-hole." Another neighbor, who
prided himself on his knowledge of big words, said with great
solemnity: "I never can believe that man is amphibious!"

Natives of tropic islands pass a large part of their lives in water,
and seem as much at home in the sea as on the land; swim and dive,
pursue fishes, play in the waves like surf-ducks and seals, and
explore the coral gardens and groves and seaweed meadows as if truly
amphibious. Even the natives of the far north bathe at times. I once
saw a lot of Eskimo boys ducking and plashing right merrily in the
Arctic Ocean.

It seemed very wonderful to us that the wild animals could keep
themselves warm and strong in winter when the temperature was far
below zero. Feeble-looking rabbits scud away over the snow, lithe and
elastic, as if glorying in the frosty, sparkling weather and sure of
their dinners. I have seen gray squirrels dragging ears of corn about
as heavy as themselves out of our field through loose snow and up a
tree, balancing them on limbs and eating in comfort with their dry,
electric tails spread airily over their backs. Once I saw a fine hardy
fellow go into a knot-hole. Thrusting in my hand I caught him and
pulled him out. As soon as he guessed what I was up to, he took the
end of my thumb in his mouth and sunk his teeth right through it, but
I gripped him hard by the neck, carried him home, and shut him up in a
box that contained about half a bushel of hazel-and hickory-nuts,
hoping that he would not be too much frightened and discouraged to eat
while thus imprisoned after the rough handling he had suffered. I soon
learned, however, that sympathy in this direction was wasted, for no
sooner did I pop him in than he fell to with right hearty appetite,
gnawing and munching the nuts as if he had gathered them himself and
was very hungry that day. Therefore