What Became of the Tadpoles? 



W. E. RlNGLE 

 Manual Training Normal School, Pittsburg, Kansas 



This is the sad story of a family of tadpoles — tadpoles that never 

 became frogs. Their curiosity or perhaps it was their appetites, 

 got the better of their discretion. 



The writer was the foster father of this family It was a large 

 one, for he and his classes in nature-study had placed about 10,000 

 frog's eggs in an aquarium in the classroom so the appearance in 

 the world of the funny little creatures might be observed from 

 day to day. They hatched out by the thousands in due time 

 and afforded everybody much amusement. Even several days 

 after hatching they were not much larger than a "wiggle-tail." 



It was about this time that the writer, while strolling in Lincoln 

 Park near the Normal, noticed a water plant floating in the creek. 

 It was a bladderwort, a plant found more frequently in the streams 

 of the northern states than in Kansas. He pulled it out and car- 

 ried it to the classroom, where he placed it in the aquarium that 

 contained the tadpoles. He regarded it as a lucky find, for it 

 would aerate the water and do away with the necessity of changing 

 it frequently. 



A peculiarity of the plant was that on its stem, one at the base 

 of each asparagus-like leaf, were unnumbered balloon shaped 

 appendages, not more than one-eighth of an inch in diameter. 

 Into each "balloon" was a small circular opening and this opening 

 was surrounded by bristles. The "balloons" were pea green and 

 semi-transparent . 



A few days later some one noticed there were not as many 

 tadpoles in the aquarium as there had been. Their disappearance 

 was a mystery, for it was quite certain no one had removed them. 

 And, what was queerer still, the number of the tadpoles continued 

 to diminish until it looked as though there would be none left. 



The Balloons Turned Black 

 Meanwhile the balloons on the water plant were turning black. 

 This was taken as a sign that they were getting ripe. One was 

 cut open to see what further change accompanied ripening. 

 The knife revealed inside the balloon the disintegrating body 

 of one of the vanished tadpoles. It had become the victim of 

 the bladderwort. Other balloons were cut into and nearly all 



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