200 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 
sweet. I have seen a male sit upon a clump of grass 
and utter his love call. Before he had been singing 
for more than half a minute three females hastened 
toward him from a distance of perhaps twenty feet. 
Each seemed anxious to reach as promptly as pos- 
sible the creature whose voice had proved so attrac- 
tive. When the mating comes, the female discharges 
a series of small shotlike eggs which are encased in 
a very tenacious mucous. While they are being de- 
posited the male fertilizes them. No sooner have the 
eggs, fertilized by the sperm cells, reached the water 
than the mucous at once begins to swell. The result 
is that eggs appear encased in two slender strings of 
jelly, each having a diameter about that of a lead 
pencil. At intervals of not more than half an inch 
the shotlike eggs may be seen. The mother toad, in 
laying these eggs, moves about rather restlessly in 
the water. By this means she succeeds in wrapping 
the strings about the grass and sticks of the pool. 
This will hold them quite safely even against a con- 
siderable current of water, should the stream rise and 
flood the side pools in which the eggs are laid. With 
this amount of care, however, the attention of both 
parents to the young entirely ceases. They are now 
abandoned to the chances of a fortune to them ex- 
ceedingly unkind. A toad will lay about five hundred 
eggs. It is evident that on the average only two of 
