Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/284

266 houses having noticed the uproar), the chorus was loud. I could hear it from my window, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. This morning there is no sign of batrachian life about the place. Within a very short time—long before the tadpoles, which will be hatched in two or three days, can possibly have matured—the pool will in the ordinary course of nature have dried up, and all those eggs will have gone to waste.

A strange life it seems. What do the frogs live on underground? Why do they omit, year after year, to come forth and lay their eggs? Do they wait to be drowned out, and then (like thrifty farmers, who improve a wet season in which to marry) proceed to perpetuate the species?

These and many other questions it would be easy to ask. Especially one would like to read from the inside the story of the life and adventures of the young, which grow from the egg to maturity—through tadpole to frog—without seeing father or mother. What a little we know! And how few are the things we see!