FINDING NATURE’S TREASURES 61 
“Those little things do look like ears,” said Uncle 
Jack, as he laughed, “but they are little tubes just back 
of the wiggle-tail’s head. He gets air through those 
tubes so that he will not drown.” 
“Are these two different kinds of wiggle-tails?” asked 
Buddy. 
“No,” replied Uncle Jack. “The young wiggle-tails are 
the ones which breathe through their tails. When they 
become full-grown wiggle-tails, they stop breathing 
through their tails and breathe through these other 
tubes. They stop eating, too, because they are changing 
from wiggle-tails to mosquitoes and they do not yet have 
a mouth.” 
“They are almost like tad-frogs , aren’t they, Uncle 
Jack?” Marylee remarked. Before Uncle Jack could re¬ 
ply, she cried, “Oh, look! look! The skin of that one at 
the top of the water is splitting down the back! It is 
popping open!” 
The crack in the skin opened wider and wider. Slowly 
a mosquito pushed itself up through the crack. Care¬ 
fully it stood on the empty skin which floated on the 
water like a tiny raft. 
“How wonderful! How very, very wonderful!” ex¬ 
claimed Marylee almost in a whisper, because she could 
hardly believe her eyes. “There sits a mosquito with 
head, eyes, wings, and legs, and it crawled out of that 
thing which did not look a bit like a mosquito.” 
“It is wonderful the way they change from wiggle- 
tails to mosquitoes,” agreed Buddy, “but I don’t like 
