A GARDEN DIARY 191 



themselves in ponds separated widely from any 

 others, often not even fed by streams, and 

 moreover destitute of nearly all other animal in- 

 habitants, with the exception of certain minute 

 molluscs, which are believed by zoologists to 

 have reached them upon the feet of wading 

 birds, and that at such a remote period of time 

 that they have become what are practically new 

 species. 



Many years ago, on reaching the top of 

 Mweelrea, the leading mountain of Connemara, 

 I remember my surprise at finding swarms of 

 young tadpoles wriggling along the margin of 

 a small pond, nearly upon the actual summit. 

 They were still in the engaging comma -like 

 stage, before legs had begun to dawn upon their 

 consciousness, and seemed to have remarkably 

 little to eat, for the water was crystal clear. The 

 pond was one of that attractive kind known as 

 carries, held by the geologists, doubtless truly, 

 to be of glacial origin ; a delicious clean-cut 

 oval ; pure rock, from marge to marge ; gouged, 

 as if by the chisel of Michael Angelo, from the 

 matrix in which it lay. But for the unmistakable 

 evidence of the tadpoles it would, to any reason- 

 able imagination, have suggested the bath of 

 some mountain nymph very much sooner than 

 frog-spawn. 



We are all of us to-day evolutionists, if some 

 of us still with a certain amount of reservation, 



