Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/283

Rh for the first time the creature in the act of calling. And every time I saw him I laughed. He lay stretched out at full length upon the surface of the pool, floating high, as if he were somehow peculiarly buoyant. Then suddenly his hind parts dropped, his head flew up, his enormous white, or pinkish-white, vocal sac was instantaneously inflated (like a white ball on the water), and the grating call was given out; after which the creature's head dropped, his hinder parts bobbed up into place (sometimes he was nearly overset by the violence of the action), and again he lay silent.

This same ludicrous performance—which by the watch was repeated every three or four seconds—I observed more at length in the other pool after my return. It seems to be indulged in only so long as the frogs are unmated. I took it for the call of the male, the "lusty bachelor." At the same moment couples lay here and there upon the water, all silent as dead men.

That was yesterday afternoon. At night, as had been true the evening previous (the neighbors in at least four of the nearer