A GARDEN DIARY 189 
May 8, 1900 
RETUEAING to our pond this morning to 
see whether the water-lilies propose flower- 
ing this season, I find that the frogs have 
been depositing spawn along its edges, so that 
the thongs of Irish leather may become necessary 
sooner than I expected! 
All the same I am delighted to see the frog- 
spawn, for J have an affection for tadpoles. Youth- 
ful associations cluster pretty thickly around them, 
but apart from such a merely sentimental attach- 
ment, there is a satisfaction, I may say a zoologic 
thrill, about this transition of a water - living 
and water-breathing animal into an air-breathing 
one; a transition going on, moreover, not at some 
remote, and more or less dubious geologic age, but 
under one’s very eyes, even, as in this case, in the 
middle of one’s own decorous, shaven lawn. 
It is difficult to remember that frogs breathe 
air as much as we do ourselves. Unlike our- 
selves, and their other zoologic. betters, they do 
so, however, not by alternate contractions and 
