the shallow little ponds which fill them and which are indicated from a distance at this season by the lead-colored grass that veils them and conceals their glitter.  And there are longer swells, begotten of drainage, sometimes of eight or ten feet in a mile, which deceive you, as you advance, into the expectation of a grand prospect when once you shall have got to the top of them.  That, practically, you never do.  Arrived at what seems to be the crest of a ridge, you see nothing but more flat.  The eye, in despair, gives, when you come in sight of it, an inclination to the water.  The pond-surface ceases to be horizontal.  The principle of gravitation stands contradicted point-blank.

The most frequent vedette of these miniature lakes is the heron,—­usually the blue, sometimes the larger white, the latter a most beautiful bird.  Yet neither is common.  Still rarer in such situations is the bittern, the Timon of birds, the rushes being seldom high enough to afford him the strict concealment he likes.  The mallard has to be his own sentinel, as a rule.  He does not depend on these ponds for food, and, like other wild creatures, he reserves his chief vigilance for feeding-time.  They are places of repose, at mid-day and at night, for the ducks of this and two or three other species, notably the blue- and green-winged teal, which at other times haunt the clumps of oak and pecan that skirt the sparse streams and their summer-dry affluents, where nuts and acorns in great variety, those of the live-oak being very sweet, supply unfailing winter provision.  The thickets of ilex that shade off these wooded reaches into the treeless prairie are the resort of many partridges.  You are led back into the open ground by another game-bird, the pinnated grouse, the widest ranger of its genus, but at the North disappearing only less rapidly than the buffalo.  As yet his most destructive foe in this region is perhaps the hawk, although he is raided from the timber by the opossum, raccoon, and three species of cat, while on the open his nest has marked attractions for the skunk and probably the coyote.  He has survived these dumb discouragers so long, and the heat at his proper season is so trying to his human foe, that he may long find a refuge here and proudly lead forth his young Texans for scores of Augusts.  He and his family will often quietly walk off while the panting pointer seeks the shade of the wagon and the gunner cools off under the heavy felt sombrero that is here found to be the best headgear for summer.  A very moderate game-law, well executed, would sustain this fine bird indefinitely in the struggle for existence.  But law of any kind seems a foreign idea on these sea-like primeval plains.  It is like thinking of a parliament in the Pleiocene, or of a court-house on the Grand Banks.