In the Sierra 



tain sides, and in piles of moraine boulders, 

 most of them mere pools. Only in those 

 canons of the larger streams at the foot of 

 declivities, where the down thrust of the 

 glaciers was heaviest, do we find lakes of con- 

 liderable size and depth. How grateful a 

 task it would be to trace them all and study 

 :hem ! How pure their waters are, clear as 

 crystal in polished stone basins ! None of 

 them, so far as I have seen, have fishes, I sup- 

 pose on account of falls making them inac- 

 :essible. Yet one would think their eggs 

 might get into these lakes by some chance or 

 other ; on ducks* feet, for example, or in their 

 mouths, or in their crops, as some plant seeds 

 are distributed. Nature has so many ways of 

 doing such things. How did the frogs, found 

 in all the bogs and pools and lakes, however 

 high, manage to get up these mountains? 

 Surely not by jumping. Such excursions 

 through miles of dry brush and boulders 

 would be very hard on frogs. Perhaps their 

 stringy gelatinous spawn is occasionally en- 

 [ 269] 



