The Bird in the Egg 465 



Now let us examine closely the egg of the frog. It, 

 too, has a protective gelatinous outer coating. Before the 

 egg was laid it was enveloped with several very delicate 

 membranes, which were sponge-like in their property of 

 absorbing water, and when deposited in a pond they 

 immediately swelled up to the present gelatinous con- 

 sistency. If the egg has been deposited but an hour or 

 two, it will show a perfectly smooth surface under the 

 lens, but look at it intermittently for a half-hour, or even 

 longer, and you will be well repaid. Slowly but surely, 

 as the shadow of an eclipse darkens the face of the sun, 

 a tiny furrow ploughs its way over the surface of the dark 

 end of the egg. It lengthens and deepens and soon divides 

 the egg into two equal halves. 



Let us stop a minute and realize what we have seen. 

 It is all but the beginning of life, the first hint of a higher 

 order of things than those one-celled creatures which we 

 dredged from the mud, — than the life which, untold ages 

 ago, was all that the earth boasted. The original cell of 

 the egg has, before our eyes, divided into two! But 

 while we have been lost in wonder and awe, — for the lover 

 of Nature must indeed be stolid if the first sight of such a 

 happening does not stir his deepest emotions, — the life 

 has ceased its progress never an instant. A new furrow 

 appears, crossing the first at right angles, dividing the egg 

 into quarters; then other furrows dividing it into eighths, 

 then cross-furrows, and the count is lost; the multitude of 

 cells repeating themselves hour after hour, day and night, 

 arranging themselves, each in its right position, obeying 

 some inscrutable law, until at the end of about 300 hours 



