scure marking of gray on the underside. While in general it resembles a bullfrog, it is easily distinguished. On each side of the body the pond frog has a veinlike fold of skin extending from the eye backward at the edge of the back. In no stage of its career has the bullfrog even the slightest suggestion of this fold of skin.

The tadpoles of the bullfrog grow to greater size than those of the common frog, and may be distinguished from others by their distinctly yellowish underside. In the sunlight they will lie in the shallow water at the borders of the pond, but at the slightest disturbance they rush into deeper water, skimming so close to the bottom that a muddy trail follows their thrashing tails. The bullfrog, even when young, has a peculiar, sharp cry when it is disturbed, and it does not plunge immediately into the water but skims over the surface for a short distance. On the other hand the green pond frog leaps into the water and instantly dives to the bottom, where it kicks out its hind legs and stirs up a cloud of mud in which it conceals itself. The green pond frog croaks, the bullfrog has a deep voice like a bass viol. This note is repeated from four to six times in succession.

There is a similar confusion between the leopard or pickerel frog and the common salt marsh frog. Sometimes these are mistaken for toads. The pickerel frog is so called because its bright colors, fishermen say, make it an especially good bait for pickerel fishing. It is often found far

from any water. It is an adventurous overland traveler. The salt marsh frog, which also is spotted, though not so beautifully and clearly as the leopard frog, is found in swampy meadows rather than in large bodies of water.

The eggs of frogs are deposited in jelly

masses, some of them on submerged twigs, others in smaller clusters in the shallow water at the edge of the bank. The toad's eggs are also laid in the water, but in strings of jelly. I have seen a line of toad's eggs almost a rod long, extending clear across a small pool. The accompanying illustrations show the difference between these jelly-like masses of frog's eggs and the string-like lines of toad's eggs.

There is hardly any other animal so well adapted to captivity indoors as the frogs. They are easily cared for in any form of aquarium, as it is not absolutely essential to feed them regularly. By only a little skill such an aquarium or vivarium may be made attractive, and the frogs themselves will afford almost endless amusement by their antics.

The development of toad's eggs and frog's eggs may be observed by the aid of a pocket lens and to better advantage than with the unaided eye. When the tadpoles first begin to wiggle within the transparent eggs, they look, under slight magnification with a pocket lens, like chocolate mice.

Bats Are Not "Batty," Don't Kill Them

Every Scout may have seen bats in flight, but he knows little about them. That seems to be the case with most persons. Many of our best naturalists are almost as ignorant. Bats appeal to us as mysterious and almost uncanny things. Dr. William T. Hornaday in his interesting book, says, "The strange, wing-handed, flying mammals composing this order exhibit differences in form that are fairly bewildering. They range all the way from the beautiful to the fantastic and the hideous, and some are well worthy of study."

In general it may be said that most bats

are useful to man in destroying noxious insects, but there are in some countries harmful species that destroy fruit, and a few that suck the blood of domestic animals.

When a bat flies into an occupied room, it is interesting to note the different points of view. Some are afraid, because "the awful things get in one's hair," though nobody ever has seen a bat get into anyone's hair. There are no other flying creatures so skillful in steering clear of obstacles. Scientists have made tests by stretching wires in rooms where bats are flying, connecting the wires with an electric signal, and it is said that they wing their way between these almost invisible wires without touching them. But if one should get into one's hair, it would do no more harm than a hummingbird, perhaps not so much. A whole company would not go crazy if a bee were to fly into a room, though some people might be afraid of it, but a bat seems to cause a general panic, and yet, strange to say, there are in every company some who cry out, "Don't kill it." It somehow excites our fear and yet appeals to our love.

From the structural point of view there is nothing more astonishing in all nature than these long fingers that become the main structure of the filmy, wing-like appendages. Four fingers are long, while the equivalent of a thumb is short and free, and is developed into a hooked claw, by the aid of which the queer little creature can climb and support itself. The favorite position of a bat at rest is hanging head downward. We use the expression, "blind as a bat," and yet is there a creature on earth that can see better than a bat? Its sense of sight must be even better than that of the owl.

Not a long time ago a Scout brought to me what I had never previously seen-a

mother bat with two clinging, nursing young. Squirrels and woodchucks usually leave their young in the nest, though they will sometimes, like a cat with her kittens, take them by the nape of the neck and carry them from place to place. I remember seeing a gray squirrel's nest dumped from a tree, and the mother squirrel immediately carried off the young. Field mice are reported to carry their young clinging to them. It would seem to be difficult enough for "a mouse with wings," which is the figurative manner in which a bat is often referred to, to fly herself, without taking along the family, but the bat does carry her little ones. I have learned by experiment that when the little ones are removed, she will return at night to get them.

The bat here photographed was kept for a time in the laboratory, and then placed on one of the timbers of a veranda, and by experiment it was found that the bat does not always take the young in flight. One of them was removed and the mother bat evidently came back and obtained it the next day, because it was nowhere to be found. Here is a big field for original observation.

What a Troop Did With a Cocoanut Shell

All of the members of Troop 15, Richmond, L. I., New York, are Junior Members of the Audubon Society and are actively engaged in bird work. The troop has established a bird sanctuary in a cemetery near their troop headquarters and placed various feeding devices in the

trees.

In the winter of 1915-1916, Ethelmer Munroe, Assistant Scoutmaster, placed a cocoanut filled with suet in a tree at the back of his house. This cocoanut was vis

ited by chickadees, juncos and woodpeckers and most of the suet eaten out. The cocoanut was left hanging in the tree and during the summer it was taken possession of by a pair of wrens who nested in it and raised a family, although part of the suet and cocoanut meat remained in the shell.-CHARLES A. JOHNSON, Scout

master.

Vermont Scouts and the Canada Porcupine

Last fall the Wolf patrol, while exploring some small caves. across the Connecticut River in the town of Monroe, N. H., found numerous signs that one of them was the home of some wild animal. What it was they were too ignorant then to tell. They named the cave "Rabbit Relief," at a venture, though one of the boys was sure that was not right. A few weeks later they made another trip to the caves on their snowshoes and solved the mystery-in sadness.

Someone else had been up the glen ahead of them, and at the top, in the further end of the cave where their stranger friend had his home, they found a steel trap, and a moment later they were startled by a pool of blood on the ground in the adjoining cave, which they had marked with a flag as their headquarters in that vicinity. The neighbor whom they had come to call on had been killed! But he had left a dying message for the boys, telling them plainly who he was. There were three sharp pointed quills near the spot where he breathed his last, similar to those the boys found in a cabin near the summit of Mt. Washington (forty miles east), where they spent a night during one of their last summer's hikes. One of the boys also noticed some queer marks on a stump near-by, and then they saw that the bark had been gnawed off from

a lot of little trees all around them. The cave was immediately rechristened "Porcupine Grief."

On the way home it was discovered that another member of the same family had come to grief only the day before. A New Hampshire boy had shot a pure white porcupine, with pink eyes and pink feet, in a hollow stump a few rods from the cave, and had sent it away to be mounted. Later the Scouts visited this animal in his new home, and took a picture of him looking up towards his old home on the mountain (see illustration). His new owner told them about the beautiful pictures of a white porcupine photographed six years in succession on the shore of a little Michigan lake and published in the Geographic Magazine in June, 1911. When the first of those pictures was printed five years before, the author was told that there was only one specimen of a white porcupine in existence, and that one was in a Vermont museum. So one

of our boys went to St. Johnsbury a few days later (twelve miles north of here) and found two white ones in the museum there, one of them keeping company with a white red-squirrel and a white robin redbreast.

An Animated Jug

On page 88 "showing some nature novelties" is "an animated jug." It looks like a jug because it has an appendage that suggests a handle. Its color is like that of the typical "little brown jug." Evidently it is animated. It squirms and contorts itself as soon as it is touched.

We find these curious things in the ground. They are frequently turned up in the garden by the plow. They are tomato worms. The eggs are laid in the springtime on the tomato vines; the larva feeds

on its leaves and also on those of some other plants, and then passes the long period of pupation in the ground. Some pupal forms attach themselves by a slender thread of silk to a vine and there resemble a stiff and broken twig. Others wrap themselves in silk and form what we know as cocoons. These cling to twigs and branches, but our tomato worm's curious pupae go into the ground to astonish naturalists and some other persons who are not naturalists who get curious notions that they are harmful. Such persons talk about "long stinger" and "terrible beak," but there is no sting nor piercing beak. It is an instance of misunderstanding.

Our Scouts will do a good turn if they will tell someone that these curious things, so commonly feared, are the harmless pupae of the tomato worm.

By the way, when you find one, if you want some real fun, put the pupa in a little box of earth kept fairly moist, not wet, and then watch it come out in the spring. You will get another notion of these little animated jugs and learn something about the marvelous transformation of insects.

His Scientific Name is "Circus" A marsh hawk is always dignified and austere, and yet it may be trained to mind its own business even when a dainty pigeon is placed by its side. It requires only a few words of reprimand to induce it to tolerate the com

pany of something totally incongruous. The boys who visited my pet house and saw its strange companionship nicknamed this marsh hawk and pigeon the imp and the angel.

In the wild the marsh hawk moves by a dignified course close to the ground, "quartering" as one may express this swerving from side to side, like that of a well trained dog on the scent of a hare. It is this peculiar flight that has earned it the name of the harehound or harrier hawk. A few successive strokes of the wings and then a sail on motionless pinions make it appear leisurely, and in sharp contrast to the rush and haste often ascribed to the hawk.

The farmer regards the marsh hawk as his friend. It is of service in destroying meadow mice, grasshoppers and other pests, but we must admit that it feeds on small birds at certain times when other food is scarce.

The scientific name of this hawk is Circus, meaning that it soars at nesting time. in graceful curves as it sails around and around and floats high above the earth in evolutions that are beautiful. At other times, when soaring high in the sky, suddenly he falls and turns somersaults as he comes down. This zigzag flight with some other peculiarities makes one think of a gigantic saw, each zigzag being done in a series of somersaults and accompanied by a screech. Its appearance in the wild is strangely tinged with harshness, but I think that those who have kept it as a pet would call it only dignified.