The Boys' Note-Book.
A Note-book was incidentally mentioned in the last chapter. Properly speaking, it should have been mentioned long before.
On the table in the boat-house lay a large folio manuscript book, in which the boys noted down whatever, in their reading or observation, struck them as noticeable or worth remembering, or of which they wished to be reminded at some future time, when they should have leisure to look up what they wished to know concerning the matter noted. Before therefore I close this "strange eventful history," I shall quote a few pages at random out of their Note-book, just to show how it was kept up.
In the left-hand margin of each sheet the date of the entry was written opposite each note, and each jotting was signed by the one making it. So that the book ran after this fashion:—
"They have a novel mode of netting shore birds at Lynn. They have long nets stretched on poles about six feet high, on the sands towards dusk, one line below high water mark and the other upon the ridge."—F. M.
"All grain-eating birds feed their young on insects—as a matter of course because there is no grain in the spring—so they make up for the damage they may do to the grain. I shall write a letter to this effect to the Secretary of the Sparrow Club here. The fellows in that club are as proud of their sparrow heads as a red Indian of his scalps."—F. M.
Mole Cricket.
"Crickets are the thirstiest of all thirsty creatures."