The Bird in the Egg 465 
Now let us examine closely the egg of the frog. It, 
too, has a protective gelatinous outer coating. Before the 
egg was laid it was enveloped with several very delicate 
membranes, which were sponge-like in their property of 
absorbing water, and when deposited in a pond they 
immediately swelled up to the present gelatinous con- 
sistency. If the egg has been deposited but an hour or 
two, it will show a perfectly smooth surface under the 
lens, but look at it intermittently for a half-hour, or even 
longer, and you will be well repaid. Slowly but surely, 
as the shadow of an eclipse darkens the face of the sun, 
a tiny furrow ploughs its way over the surface of the dark 
end of the egg. It lengthens and deepens and soon divides 
the egg into two equal halves. 
Let us stop a minute and realize what we have seen. 
It is all but the beginning of life, the first hint of a higher 
order of things than those one-celled creatures which we 
dredged from the mud,—than the life which, untold ages 
ago, was all that the earth boasted. The original cell of 
the egg has, before our eyes, divided into two! But 
while we have been lost in wonder and awe,—for the lover 
of Nature must indeed be stolid if the first sight of such a 
happening does not stir his deepest emotions,—the life 
has ceased its progress never an instant. A new furrow 
appears, crossing the first at right angles, dividing the egg 
into quarters; then other furrows dividing it into eighths, 
then cross-furrows, and the count is lost; the multitude of 
cells repeating themselves hour after hour, day and night, 
arranging themselves, each in its right position, obeying 
some inscrutable law, until at the end of about 300 hours 
