The Wit of the Wild 



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their first thought is of egg-laying that prime 

 duty of all wild creatures. For this purpose 

 they, like other frogs, must go to the water; 

 and in April (or perhaps later in northerly lati- 

 tudes) they troop from the woods down to the 

 swamps, ponds and muddy pools in order to 

 deposit their eggs under water. Swimming or 

 creeping out a little way from shore, they at- 

 tach their eggs singly or in little clusters (not 

 in masses of jelly, like the big frogs) to a blade 

 of grass or some other support in shallow water 

 and leave them to be hatched by the warmth 

 of the sun. 



This happens usually inside of two days, when 

 the cream-colored tadpoles, a quarter of an 

 inch long, struggle out of the egg coatings and 

 cling to the grass stems by means of a tempo- 

 rary sucker-like appendage near the mouth, 

 steadily gaining in strength, and hoping no 

 big beetle or other dreadful ogre will catch 

 them before they grow able to swim. This abil- 

 ity comes speedily with the perfection of the 

 tail, for at first they have no limbs, and breathe 

 through external tufted gills like a mud-puppy. 



