of frogs, toads, lizards, and snakes, and they will soon make themselves at home. You must not be surprised if your pets in this cage feed upon one another. I once owned an old bull-frog who would attempt to swallow anything that moved, with the exception of snakes. This frog swallowed two live mice in one day, but he did not get hungry again for two weeks.[5] There are but few poisonous snakes in our country, and in the Northern States we have but two kinds--copperheads and rattlesnakes. Neither of these will add to the interest of your collection, and must be left out and let alone.[6] There are many beautiful and harmless little snakes to be found in every field. They abound within the city limits of New York.[7] I saw two sunning themselves on a neighbor’s lawn, and discovered their home in the gate-post. You will be surprised at the many varieties of frogs you can find when you start to collect these comical little creatures. Some of them are very difficult to catch, and they often turn up in the oddest of places. I found a big toad in the top of a tree which I had climbed after young crows. It was a common hop-toad, not a tree-frog. Silly Superstitions of Hoop-Snake Age. It is high time that the American boys, in the dawn of the twentieth century, should forget all the fabulous stories of snakes with the power to “charm” persons, toads with death-dealing breath, deadly swifts and venomous lizards. All such yarns are handed down to us by our superstitious ancestors, and are a part of the witch belief of the old Salem folk. There are people living now who will tell you that they have seen a hoop-snake with his tail in his mouth, rolling down hill, and these people really believe what they say; but so did the Salem folks believe in witches. [Illustration: Chipmonk. White-footed Mouse. Short-tail Meadow-Rat.] Toads: Useful and Harmless. If our comical, insect-destroying toads were venomous, the hand which pens these lines would have perished while it was still a chubby, dimpled, baby’s hand. Neither Do Toads Make Warts; otherwise the writer’s hands would be far too warty to wield either a pen or a brush; but in spite of the hundreds of toads handled by the writer he never was afflicted with warts on either hands or body. In Pennsylvania there is a toad which has occupied the same back-dooryard for over ten years, and he will eat his own weight in “bugs” in a very short time. The funniest toad ever owned by the writer was a Kentucky hop-toad with five well-developed legs, and the largest frog the writer ever caught was a New York bull-frog, which weighed one pound. Frog Market. St. Paul and Minneapolis are the great frog markets of the world. The receipts there last year, according to the daily papers, were something over six million frogs!