Presently they begin to jerk backwards and forwards, and perform such simple gymnastics as the small accommodations of the egg will allow; and at last one morning, to my delight, I find two or three of the little things free from the egg, and swimming like so many tiny fishes in my bowl of water.  How fast they come out now; five this morning, but twenty to-night, and thrice as many to-morrow!  The next day I conclude that the remaining eggs will not hatch, for they still show only dull, dead-looking dots:  so reluctantly I throw them away, wash out my bowl, and fill it anew with pond water.  But, before doing this, I had to catch all my little family, and put them safely into a tumbler to remain during their house-cleaning.  This was hard work; but I accomplished it with the help of a teaspoon, and soon restored them to a fresh, clean home.

It would be difficult to tell you all their history; for never did little things grow faster, or change more wonderfully, than they.

One morning I found them all arranged round the sides of the bowl in regular military ranks, as straight and stiff as a company on dress parade.  It was then that I counted them, and discovered that there were just sixty-two.

You would think, at first sight, that these sixty-two brothers and sisters were all exactly alike; but, after watching them a while, you see that one begins to distinguish himself as stronger and more advanced than any of the others,—­the captain, perhaps, of the military company.  Soon he sports a pair of little feathery gills on each side of his head, as a young officer might sport his mustache; but these gills, unlike the mustache, are for use as well as for ornament, and serve him as breathing tubes.

How the little fellows grow! no longer a slim little fish, but quite a portly tadpole with rounded body and long tail, but still with no expression in his blunt-nosed face, and only two black-looking pits where the eyes are to grow.

The others are not slow to follow their captain’s example.  Day after day some new little fellow shows his gills, and begins to swim by paddling with his tail in a very stylish manner.

And now a sad thing happens to my family of sixty-two,—­something which would never have happened had I left the eggs at home in their own pond; for there there are plenty of tiny water-plants, whose little leaves and stems serve for many a delicious meal to young tadpoles.  I did not feed them, not knowing what to give them, and half imagining that they could live very well upon water only; and so it happened that one morning, when I was taking them out with a spoon as usual, to give them fresh water, I counted only fifty.  Where were the others?

At the bottom of the bowl lay a dozen little tails, and I was forced to believe that the stronger tadpoles had taken their weaker brothers for supper.

I didn’t like to have my family broken up in this way, and yet I didn’t at that time know what to give them:  so the painful proceeding was not checked; and day after day my strongest tadpoles grew even stronger, and the tails of the weaker lay at the bottom of the bowl.