APRIL DAYS 77 
ping creatures, which seem so unlike, should 
coincide so nearly in their juvenile career, while 
the tritons and salamanders, which border so 
closely on each other in their maturer state as 
sometimes to be hardly distinguishable, yet 
choose different methods and different ele- 
ments for laying their eggs. The eggs of our 
salamanders, or land lizards, are deposited be- 
neath the moss on some damp rock, without 
any gelatinous envelope; they are but few in 
number, and the anxious mamma may some- 
times be found coiled in a circle around them, 
like the symbolic serpent of eternity. 
The small number of birds yet present in 
early April gives a better opportunity for care- 
ful study, —— more especially if one goes armed 
with that best of fowling-pieces, a small spy- 
glass: the best, — since how valueless for pur- 
poses of observation is the bleeding, gasping, 
dying body, compared with the fresh and living 
creature, as it tilts, trembles, and warbles on 
the bough before you! Observe that robin in 
the oak-tree’s top: as he sits and sings, every 
one of the dozen different notes which he flings 
down to you is accompanied by a separate flirt 
and flutter of his whole body, and, as Thoreau 
says of the squirrel, “each movement seems to 
imply a spectator.” Study that song sparrow : 
why is it that he always goes so ragged in ' 
