I never knew exactly where; and I am afraid that,
should I meet even my progressive little captain again, I should hardly
recognize him, so grown and altered he would be. He no longer devours
his brothers, but, with a tongue as long as his body, seizes slugs and
insects, and swallows them whole.
In the winter he sleeps with his brothers and sisters, with the bottom
of some pond or marsh for a bed, where they all pack themselves away,
hundreds together, laid so closely that you can't distinguish one from
another.
But early in the spring you may hear their loud croaking; and when the
March sun has thawed the ice from the ponds, the mother-frogs are all
very busy with their eggs, which they leave in the shallow water,--round
jelly-like masses, like the one I told you of at the beginning of this
story, made up of hundreds and hundreds of eggs. For the frog mother
hopes for a large family of children, and she knows, by sad experience,
that no sooner are they born than the fishes snap them up by the dozen;
and even after they have found their legs, and begin to feel old, and
competent to take care of themselves, the snakes and the weasels will
not hesitate to take two or three for breakfast, if they come in the
way. So you see the mother-frog has good reason for laying so many eggs.
The toads too, who, by the way, are cousins to the frogs, come down in
April to lay their eggs also in the water,--long necklaces of a double
row of fine transparent eggs, each one showing its black dot, which is
to grow into a tadpole, and swim about with its cousins, the frog
tadpoles, while they all look so much alike that I fancy their own
mothers do not know them apart.
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