s of any
moving thing. For instance, you will hear a field-mouse rustling long
before you can see its queer pointed nose pushing its way through the
dead leaves. Or it may be a mole blundering blindly along. If by any
chance a mole is caught in a trap while you are in the country, be
sure to examine its little hands and feel the softness of its fur.
Perhaps the farm boy will skin it for you.

Snakes

Sometimes the rustling is a snake on his way to a sunny spot where he
can bask and sleep. Very slender brown speckled snakes, or
blind-worms, are quite harmless, and so are the large grass-snakes,
which are something like a mackerel in lines and markings. The adder,
however, which is yellowish brown in color with brown markings and a
"V" on his head, is dangerous and should be avoided.

Ants

On p. 205 is given the title of a book about bees. Hardly less
wonderful are ants, concerning whom there is much curious information
in the same work, the reading of which makes it ten times more
interesting to watch an ant-hill than it was before. One sometimes has
to remember that it is as serious for ants to have their camp stirred
up by a walking-stick as it would be for New York if Vesuvius were
tossed on top of it.

Swallows and Hawks

In the flight of birds there is nothing to compare for beauty and
speed with the swift, or for power and cleverness with the hawk. On
moist evenings, when the swifts fly low and level, backward and
forward, with a quaint little musical squeak, like a mouse's, they
remind one of fish that dart through the water of clear streams under
bridges. The hawk, even in a high wind, can remain, by tilting his
body at the needed angle, perfectly still in the air, while his steady
wide eyes search the ground far below him for mice or little birds.
Then, when he sees something, his body suddenly seems to be made of
lead and he drops like a stone on his prey. A hawk can climb the sky
by leaning with outspread wings against the breeze and cork-screwing
up in a beautiful spiral.

Squirrels

The time to see squirrels is September and October, when the beech
nuts and hazel nuts are ripe. In the pictures he sits up, with his
tail resting on his back, holding nuts in his little forepaws; but one
does not often see him like this in real life. He is either scampering
over the ground with his tail spread out behind him or chattering
among the branches and scrambling from one to another. The squirrel is