The little toads started out, perhaps a hundred at a time, from the small pool in which their eggs were laid. These creatures find dragons on every side. The gartersnake comes along and gets his first toll; the heron follows him and takes such as catch his hungry eye; the turkey gobbles up his from what are left. By the time the toad-eating creatures in the neighborhood have taken such as they found, there are very few remaining. These doubtless have been left for a very good reason, generally because they were not noticed. This was because they looked like the ground on which they sat, and because they kept perfectly quiet while the enemy moved about. This process has gone on so long that the toad has come to be astonishingly well protected by its resemblance to the ground. This likeness it intensifies by its interesting habit not only of keeping entirely quiet, but of dropping its nose to the ground, instead of sitting high on its front legs, as it does when not in danger. I have noticed that if a snake and a toad be placed in the same cage, when the snake approaches to capture the toad the toad drops into a squatting position, and is very likely to blow himself up until he is rounder in outline than he was before. Whether this is a deceptive trick which makes him the more resemble a stone is more than I can say. I do not remember having seen our eastern toad do it. I have seen it happen a number of times in the laboratory of a Colorado naturalist, and it is quite possible that in the open country more sparsely covered with vegetation than is our ground in the east this inflating device may serve the toad more effectually than if it kept its own outline. Even among creatures far more active than the toad and the katydid an inconspicuous color must certainly result in distinctly better protection. Everyone knows the jay and the cardinal when first he has seen them, if only he has a slight acquaintance with their pictures. They are so conspicuous that we recognize them at once. More common in my region than the jay or the cardinal is the red-eyed vireo. This creature moves industriously in and out among the leaves of our trees. It is persistently in motion, is nearly constant in song, and is a bird of fair size, being larger than our English sparrow, though smaller than a robin. Many a nature lover will recognize twenty-five or thirty birds at sight without any difficulty, and not know the vireo. Yet the vireo is more common than two-thirds of the birds he knows. There can be but one reason for this; the bird is inconspicuous. The olive-green of its back, with its light under parts, serves to hide it completely amid the foliage. Even the bird-lover learns to find it first by its jerky song, and then by watching for its movements among the leaves.