138 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [15:4— Apr., 1919 



The new problems he has to meet are vital ones, — how shall he 

 breathe, what shall he eat, where can he hide himself from danger, 

 who are his foes ? After he has left the old home he must be rather 

 homesick for there he had to take water into his mouth only about 

 twenty times in a minute ; while now, besides the air he gets into 

 his lungs, his little throat must throb about one hundred times in a 

 minute to pump his mouth full of air or he might suffocate. The 

 delights of the palate now fill his mind and his taste is better pleased 

 by seeing the wriggle of an angle worm's tail than anything else. 

 You would laugh to see him stretch his neck, raise his head and 

 cock it on one side, then dart after that wriggle just disappearing 

 in the sand. Poor angle-worm, its of no use to struggle, Red-spot 

 has you already half way down his hungry throat. 



Once in a while he finds his coat is getting too short in the sleeves, 

 too narrow in the shoulders, and withal a little rusty. So he wrig- 

 gles and twists till it bursts off from his head. Then he gets it off 

 from his front legs and his back, and when he has stripped it off 

 from the last toe of his hind legs onto his tail he turns around and 

 pulls it off with his mouth. Then what does he do but deliberately 

 swa low it! His new coat does not have to be put on, it was 

 already there, new and fresh, under the old one. 



It seems as though such a pretty, graceful creature as he might 

 have higher ambitions and daintier tastes ; for he lives in the midst 

 of the most beautiful things. There are dark cool green mosses 

 and soft gray lichens and the rich browns of decaying wood. He 

 wanders at will in shady nooks where ferns grow, where it is cool 

 in siunmer and warm in winter. 



Sometimes, after a warm summer rain, so happy and reckless he 

 grows, so sure he can glide like a flash of flame colored light out of 

 harm's way, that out he comes from his secret hiding places into 

 the open. This is the way he has gained the reputation among 

 people of raining down with the angle wonns. We know better 

 than that. He is just bent on an angle-worm hunt, that is all. 

 Rained down, to be sure! 



This happy-go-lucky, selfish existence cannot go on always. 

 When he is two-and a half or thsee years old, a new impulse seizes 

 him irresistibly; for the ways of countless ancestors before him 

 have left their impress on him. Does his throat feel parched and 

 dry? Are his dreams of his childhood's home? We know not, 

 but away he goes, driven as by fate. Think of a journey of miles 



