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These water-haunting creatures are naturally mistaken for the vegetable-feeding water-vole, and so the latter has to bear the blame of their misdoings. There are lesser inhabitants of the brook which are injurious both to the eggs and young of fish.
The whistling swan yet remains in fair numbers, but it is to be feared that soon it will go as the trumpeter has gone. THE AMERICAN FLAMINGO, SCARLET IBIS AND ROSEATE SPOONBILL are three of the most beautiful and curious water-haunting birds of the tropics. Once all three species inhabited portions of the southern United States; but now all three are gone from our star-spangled bird fauna.
As I walked my horse slowly over the sand under the fringing oaks, I made the unpleasant discovery that snakes were very plentiful not only the harmless carpet snake, but the deadly brown and black-necked tiger variety; though against this were a corresponding number of iguanas, both of the tree-climbing and water-haunting species.
I say 'very seldom' on purpose, because there are a few cases among the extreme lower animals where a water-haunting creature can be taken out of the water and can be thoroughly dried and desiccated, or even kept for an apparently unlimited period wrapped up in paper or on the slide of a microscope; and yet, the moment a drop of water is placed on top of it, it begins to move and live again exactly as before.
The toad is a nocturnal animal; it lives through the daytime in dark and damp places; it shows a decided liking for crannies and crevices; it is wonderfully tenacious of life; it possesses the power of hibernation; it can live on extremely small quantities of food for very long periods of time together; it buries itself in mud or clay; it passes the early part of its life as a water-haunting tadpole; and last, not least, it can swell out its body to nearly double its natural size by inflating itself, which fully accounts for the stories of toads being taken out of holes every bit as big as themselves.
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