GUINEVERE THE MYSTERIOUS 141 
iridescent silvery blue. The eye proper was sil- 
very white, but the upper part of the eyeball 
fairly glowed with color. In front it was jet 
black flecked with gold, merging behind into a 
brilliant blue. Yet this patch of jeweled tissue 
was visible only rarely as the tadpole turned for- 
ward, and in the opaque liquid of the mica pool 
must have ever been hidden. And even if plainly 
seen, of what use was a shred of rainbow to a 
sexless tadpole in the depths of a shady pool! 
With high-arched fins, beginning at neck and 
throat, body compressed as in a racing yacht, 
there could be no bottom life for Guinevere. 
Whenever she touched a horizontal surface,— 
whether leaf or twig,—she careened; when she 
sculled through a narrow passage in the floating 
alge, her fins bent and rippled as they were 
pressed bodywards. So she and her fellow brood 
lived in mid-aquarium, or at most rested lightly 
against stem or glass, suspended by gentle suc- 
tion of the complex mouth. Once, when I in- 
serted a long streamer of delicate water-weed, it 
remained upright, like some strange tree of car- 
boniferous memory. After an hour I found this 
the perching-place of fourteen Redfin tads, and 
at the very summit was Guinevere. The rest 
