A GARDEN DIARY Igl 
themselves in ponds separated widely from any 
others, often not even fed by streams, and 
moreover destitute of nearly all other animal in- 
habitants, with the exception of certain minute 
molluscs, which are believed by zoologists to 
have reached them upon the feet of wading 
birds, and that at such a remote period of time 
that they have become what are practically new 
species. 
Many years ago, on reaching the top of 
Mweelrea, the leading mountain of Connemara, 
I remember my surprise at finding swarms of 
young tadpoles wriggling along the margin of 
a small pond, nearly upon the actual summit. 
They were still in the engaging comma- like 
stage, before legs had begun to dawn upon their 
consciousness, and seemed to have remarkably 
little to eat, for the water was crystal clear. The 
pond was one of that attractive kind known as 
corries, held by the geologists, doubtless truly, 
to be of glacial origin; a delicious clean-cut 
oval; pure rock, from marge to marge; gouged, 
as if by the chisel of Michael Angelo, from the 
matrix in which it lay. But for the unmistakable 
evidence of the tadpoles it would, to any reason- 
able imagination, have suggested the bath of 
some mountain nymph very much sooner than 
frog-spawn. 
We are all of us to-day evolutionists, if some 
of us still with a certain amount of reservation, 
