It would be difficult to tell you all their history; for never did
little things grow faster, or change more wonderfully, than they.
One morning I found them all arranged round the sides of the bowl in
regular military ranks, as straight and stiff as a company on dress
parade. It was then that I counted them, and discovered that there were
just sixty-two.
You would think, at first sight, that these sixty-two brothers and
sisters were all exactly alike; but, after watching them a while, you
see that one begins to distinguish himself as stronger and more advanced
than any of the others,--the captain, perhaps, of the military company.
Soon he sports a pair of little feathery gills on each side of his head,
as a young officer might sport his mustache; but these gills, unlike the
mustache, are for use as well as for ornament, and serve him as
breathing tubes.
How the little fellows grow! no longer a slim little fish, but quite a
portly tadpole with rounded body and long tail, but still with no
expression in his blunt-nosed face, and only two black-looking pits
where the eyes are to grow.
The others are not slow to follow their captain's example. Day after day
some new little fellow shows his gills, and begins to swim by paddling
with his tail in a very stylish manner.
And now a sad thing happens to my family of sixty-two,--something which
would never have happened had I left the eggs at home in their own pond;
for there there are plenty of tiny water-plants, whose little leaves and
stems serve for many a delicious meal to young tadpoles.
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