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Page 47
We intended to write a poem about those tadpoles, but Endymion tells
us that Louis Untermeyer has already smitten a lute on that topic.
We are queasy of trailing such an able poet. Therefore we celebrate
these tadpoles in prose. They deserve a prose as lucid, as limpid,
as cool and embracing, as the water of their home.
Coming back to tadpoles, the friends of our youth, shows us that we
have completed a biological cycle of much import. Back to tadpoles
in one generation, as the adage might have said. Twenty-five years
ago we ourself were making our first acquaintance with these
friendly creatures, in the immortal (for us) waters of Cobb's Creek,
Pennsylvania. (Who was Cobb, we wonder?) And now our urchins, with
furious glee, applaud their sire who wades the still frosty quags
of our pond, on Sunday mornings, to renew their supply of tads. It
is considered fair and decent that each batch of tadpoles should
live in their prison (a milk bottle) only one week. The following
Sunday they go back to the pond, and a new generation take their
places. There is some subtle kinship, we think, between children and
tadpoles. No childhood is complete until it has watched their sloomy
and impassive faces munching against the glass, and seen the gradual
egress (as the encyclop�dia pedantically puts it) of their tender
limbs, the growing froggishness of their demeanour.
Some time when you are exploring in the Britannica, by the way,
after you have read about Tactics and William Howard Taft, turn to
the article on Tadpoles and see if you can recognize them as
described by the learned G.A.B. An amusing game, we submit, would be
to take a number of encyclop�dia descriptions of familiar things,
and see how many of our friends could identify them under their
scientific nomenclature.
But it is very pleasant to dally about the pond on a mild April
morning. While the Urchiness mutters among the violets, picking blue
fistfuls of stalkless heads, the Urchin, on a plank at the
waterside, studies these weedy shallows which are lively with all
manner of mysterious excitement, and probes a waterlogged stump in
hope to recapture Brer Tarrypin, who once was ours for a short
while. Gissing (the juvenile and too enthusiastic dog) has to be
kept away from the pond by repeated sticks thrown as far as possible
in another direction; otherwise he insists on joining the tadpole
search, and, poking his snout under water, attempts to bark at the
same time, with much coughing and smother.
The tadpoles, once caught, are taken home in a small yellow pail.
They seem quite cheerful. They are kept, of course, in their native
fluid, which is liberally thickened with the oozy emulsion of moss,
mud, and busy animalcul� that were dredged up with them in clutches
along the bottom of the pond. They lie, thoughtful, at the bottom of
their milk bottle, occasionally flourishing furiously round their
prison. But, since reading that article in the Britannica, we are
more tender toward them. For the learned G.A.B. says: "A glandular
streak extending from the nostril toward the eye is the lachrymal
canal." Is it possible that tadpoles weep? We will look at them
again when we go home to-night. We are, in the main, a kind-hearted
host. If they show any signs of effusion....
[Illustration]
MAGIC IN SALAMIS
Why is it (we were wondering, as we walked to the station) that
these nights of pearly wet Long Island fog make the spiders so
active? The sun was trying to break through the mist, and all the
way down the road trees, bushes, and grass were spangled with
cob-webs, shining with tiny pricks and gems of moisture. These damp,
mildewy nights that irritate us and bring that queer soft grayish
fur on the backs of our books seem to mean high hilarity and big
business to the spider. Along the hedge near the station there were
wonderful great webs, as big as the shield of Achilles. What a
surprising passion of engineering the spider must go through in the
dark hours, to get his struts and cantilevers and his circling
gossamer girders properly disposed on the foliage.[*] Darkness is no
difficulty to him, evidently. If he lays his web on the grass, he
builds it with a little tunnel leading down to earth, where he hides
waiting his breakfast. But on such a morning, apparently, with
thousands of webs ready, there can hardly have been enough flies to
go round; for we saw all the appetent spiders had emerged from their
tubes and were waiting impatiently on the web itself--as though the
host should sit on the tablecloth waiting for his guest. Put a
finger at the rim of the web and see how quickly he vanishes down
his shaft. Most surprising of all it is to see the long threads that
are flung horizontally through the air, from a low branch of a tree
to the near-by hedge. They hang, elastic and perfect, sagged a
little by a run of fog-drops almost invisible except where the
wetness catches the light. Some were stretched at least six feet
across space, with no supporting strands to hold them from
above--and no branches from which the filament could be dropped. How
is it done? Does our intrepid weaver hurl himself madly six feet
into the dark, trusting to catch the leaf at the other end? Can he
jump so far?
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