clear transparent jelly are imbedded, at regular intervals, little
blackish dots; these elongate rapidly, and show symptoms of head and
tail curled up in a spherical cell; the jelly is gradually absorbed for
their nourishment, until on some fine morning each elongated dot gives
one vigorous wriggle, and claims thenceforward all the privileges
attendant on this dissolution of the union. The final privilege is often
that of being suddenly snapped up by a turtle or a snake: for Nature
brings forth her creatures liberally, especially the aquatic ones,
sacrifices nine-tenths of them as food for their larger cousins, and
reserves only a handful to propagate their race, on the same profuse
scale, next season.

It is surprising, in the midst of our Museums and Scientific Schools,
how little we yet know of the common things before our eyes. Our
_savans_ still confess their inability to discriminate with certainty
the egg or tadpole of a frog from that of a toad; and it is strange that
these hopping creatures, which seem so unlike, should coincide so nearly
in their juvenile career, while the tritons and salamanders, which
border so closely on each other in their maturer state as sometimes to
be hardly distinguishable, yet choose different methods and different
elements for laying their eggs. The eggs of our salamanders or
land-lizards are deposited beneath the moss on some damp rock, without
any gelatinous envelope; they are but few in number, and the anxious
mamma may sometimes be found coiled in a circle around them, like the
symbolic serpent of eternity.

The small number of birds yet present in early April gives a better
opportunity for careful study,--more especially if one goes armed with
that best of fowling-pieces, a small spy-glass: the best,--since how
valueless for purposes of observation is the bleeding, gasping, dying