When I see the silver dimples that the water strider’s feet make in this elastic surface and note this land spider galloping across a cove, the disk of the pond’s summer telephone receiver and transmitter becomes very real to my eyes. Very likely the under-water people, mullet and bream and perch, read these messages in summer and know in advance what the weather is going to be. If not, what is it that stops their feeding and disturbs them before any rumble of the approaching thunderstorm has reached my ears? Perhaps in this way they learn of other universe happenings, if such are the subjects of messages that pass, though I am not sure of this, for such information as I have been able to intercept has always referred to approaching meteorological conditions. They come to my ears only in winter, after the ice has reached a thickness of a foot or so, these promptings out of unknown space. Sometimes you need to be very near the receiver to note them. It is not possible for a mile-square, foot-thick telephone disk to whisper, yet often it grumbles only a hoarse word or two at so deep a pitch that you would hardly know it was spoken. The lowest note on a piano is shrill in comparison to this tone, audible only when the ear is within a few feet of the ice. But there are other times when the winter ice on the pond whoops and roars, and bellows and whangs as if all Bedlam were let loose and were celebrating Guy Fawkes day. A mile away, of a still winter evening, you may hear this and be dismayed, for the groanings and bellowings are such as belong to no monsters of the present day, though they might be echoes of antedeluvian battles corked within the earth for ages and now for the first time let loose. It is all very simple, of course, says my friend the scientist. It is caused by vibrations due to the expanding or contracting of the ice, or the expanding or contracting of a portion of it causing big cracks to run hither and thither. It means simply that a change in temperature is going on. But does it? Or if so, is that all it means? I crossed the pond not long ago of a beautiful springlike morning, after the sun had been up for two hours or more. There was then no voice in the receiver other than the gentle thrumming caused by the chopping of the fishermen, making holes wherein to set pickerel traps, nor was there a cloud in the sky. An hour later the soft haze of a coming warm gale spread over the horizon to the southward, and as if at the touch of a key the pond began to speak a word now and then that rapidly changed to full conversation. From the near hilltop where I stood it was as if I had cut in on a telephone line where two giants were eagerly talking under conditions that made the hearing a difficult matter. There was question and answer, query and interruption and repetition and change of tone from a low voice to a shout.