aster. Such a meadow glade is sure to be the home of many little rodents, such as meadowmice and shrews. If we look among the grass about the flower-clumps, we will find their shallow runways at the surface of the ground.

Study 46. A Brook Gone Dry

This is a study for a dry season in midsummer. The brook chosen for it should be flowing through water-holding soils, and it should be one that is ordinarily a "living" brook, but that has succumbed to the drouth.

The program of work will consist of a survey of a portion of the brook-bed and its borders, of sufficient extent to include typical portions, such as riffles and pools and miniature flood-plains. Brookside plants are to be observed, as well as all signs of animal life; also the more obvious relations of the water supply and the brook to different levels of adjacent fields. Observe what kinds of plants have succumbed to the drouth and where situated.

The record of this study may consist of:

I.

A sketch-map of the portion of the brookside studied, showing location of pools, riffles, rock ledges, flood-plains, leaf-drifts, etc., and showing also the principal natural plant formations by the brookside.

2.

Lists of plants and animals found in the more typical situations, with notes on their condition as affected by the drouth. List all plants found in the brook-bed, whether they belong there or whether they be chance seedlings of land plants springing up in unsuitable places.

XLVII.

SWIMMING HOLES

"We twa hae paidl't i' the burn
From mornin' sun till dine."

-Burns (Auld Lang Syne).

Of all elemental tastes, the liking for dabbling in water is, perhaps, the most widespread. Man and beast and bird, with few exceptions, love the waterside. They drink, they bathe, they play there. The water is cooling and refreshing. It yields cleanliness, and comfort, and pleasant recreation.

Swimming is one of the most widespread accomplishments in the animal world, even among terrestrial mammals. Most of them swim instinctively, just as they eat or breathe. Man is the only one that acquires the art by practice. For nearly all others, swimming is an inherited ancestral habit, that probably harks back to a remote age; for life began in the water, and the more primitive members of all the great groups of animals are aquatic still.

Certain of our wild semi-aquatic mammals, like the otter and the mink, swim and dive and play in the water with an ease and a grace and an abandon that are delightful. Their agility almost equals that of fishes. Young otters are reported to chase each other down slides in the banks, like boys in a swimming hole. But our domesticated beasts rarely swim voluntarily. They prefer merely to dabble in the edge of the water, enjoying its coolness and a certain protection it affords from flies. Hogs wallow and smear themselves with mud. The American bison did likewise. Cows stand in the water in fly-time, with their thin-skinned under parts immersed, and their tails flinging spray over their backs. This sort of installment shower-bath does good in two ways. When it wets the wings of flies, it puts them

temporarily out of commission; and when the water evaporates, its effect is cooling on the cow's skin.

The song-birds, also, have their bathing places. We walk up a small rivulet on a hot day, and cautiously approach its pools, and there we find the robins and the sparrows and other birds at their aquatic sports. Standing singly or by twos and threes in the shoal water, they create a great shower with the flutter of their wings. And this they do at great personal risk; for cats and other enemies may be

lurking in the shrubbery that grows beside the pools. One of the ways to conserve the birds is to provide them with safe water fountains.

Man is imitative far beyond every other creature, and especially so in youth. It is natural, therefore, that he should enter the water and try to do

there, even though clumsily, what he sees other creatures doing. Once in the new medium, and used to its coolness and its buoyancy, the boy begins to try the tricks of the swimming-things about him. The dog swims in one way, and he imitates that. The frog swims in another way, and he imitates that. And then he begins to invent new ways of his own.

The greatest social center in Boyville is the swimming hole. Its popularity is undoubted. Its resources are inexhaustible. It is democratic beyond most of our institutions. It isn't much of a place to look at, as a rule-just a bit of open water, a pond, or a pool in the creek, with broad

shoals where beginners may learn, and a deep hole for the skillful to plunge in, and a clean bank on which to come out

FIG. 138. Poor modern alternatives.

and dress. The only necessary artificial equipment is a spring board, to aid in making spectacular plunges. And if it have, slop

ing into the water, a soft clay bank down which bare feet may slide, or a black sticky mud, suitable for bodily decorations, it is especially well endowed by nature. Where else on earth is there so simple an equipment capable of fostering so much unalloyed pleasure, or of so effectively putting "every care beyond recall?"

There is so much to learn at the swimming hole! Floating, and diving, and ducking, and staying under, and springbroad plunges, and swimming in all positions and with all the strokes; and every new feat mastered and well and publicly performed, adds so to one's standing and respectability and influence in the swimming-hole community-it must be real education!

Study 47. Swimming Holes

This is a study of the common propensity of land animals toward water sports and pastimes. A hot day should be selected, and places chosen where animals naturally gather by the waterside. The creatures most available for observation will probably be small boys, dogs, pigs, cows, and birds. If any one does not know where the swimming holes are, let him ask the first small boy of the neighborhood encountered. To locate the watering-places of farm animals, let him ask the stockman. To locate the best bird baths, let him ask some local ornithologist; or, better, let him put up his own basin for the benefit of the birds in some place convenient for observation and away from danger and alarms and keep it supplied with fresh water; the birds will come and use it, without resenting observation. Times for making observations of the various sorts suggested should be so chosen as to avoid school-time and mealtime of the boys, milking time for the cows, and feeding time and sleeping time for all the others.

The program of work for this study will have to be shaped in accordance with the local opportunities offered; it is left wholly to the instructor. Better than a single session's observations on the aquatic habits of a variety of animals, may be a record for a week of brief daily observations at one bathing place (as for example, at a bird-fountain), notes being kept on the numbers and kinds of participants and the nature of their aquatic sports.

The record of this study will vary with the subjects selected and the opportunities for observation. It should narrate the full procedure of the animals studied when they are taking a bath, whether in mud or water. It should include an account of all the aquatic activities of the animals observed, evidences of benefit or of pleasure derived therefrom, and the location and character of the aquatic situations chosen by each species for its pastime.