132 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



black wrigglers filling puddles and swamps of 

 our northern country. These were slow-moving, 

 graceful creatures, partly transparent, partly re- 

 flecting every hue of the spectrum, with broad, 

 waving scarlet and hyaline fins, and strange, 

 fish-like mouths and eyes. Their habits were as 

 unpollywoglike as their appearance. I visited 

 their micaceous pool again and again; and if I 

 could have spent days instead of hours with them> 

 no moment of ennui would have intervened. 



My acquaintanceship with tadpoles in the past 

 had not aroused me to enthusiasm in the matter 

 of their mental ability; as, for example, the in- 

 mates of the next aquarium to that of the Ked- 

 fins, where 1 kept a herd or brood or school of 

 Short-tailed Blacks — pollywogs of the Giant 

 Toad {Bufo marinus) , At earliest dawn they 

 swam aimlessly about and mumbled ; at high noon 

 they mumbled and still swam; at midnight they 

 refused to be otherwise occupied. It was possible 

 to alarm them; but even while they fled they 

 mumbled. 



In bodily form my Kedfins were fish, but men- 

 tally they had advanced a little beyond the usual 

 tadpole train of reactions, reaching forward to- 

 ward the varied activities of the future amphi- 



