The captain throve finely, had clear, bright eyes, lost his feathery gills, and showed through his thin skin that he had a set of excellent legs folded up inside.  At last, one day, he kicked out the two hind ones, and after that was never tired of displaying his new swimming powers.  The fore-legs following in due time; and when all this was done, the tail, which he no longer needed to steer with, dropped off, and my largest tadpole became a little frog.

His brothers and sisters, such of them as were left (for, I grieve to say, he had required a great many hearty meals to enable him to reach the frog state), followed his illustrious example as soon as they were able; and then, of course, my little bowl of water was no suitable home for them; so away they went out into the grass, among the shallow pools, and into the swamps.  I never knew exactly where; and I am afraid that, should I meet even my progressive little captain again, I should hardly recognize him, so grown and altered he would be.  He no longer devours his brothers, but, with a tongue as long as his body, seizes slugs and insects, and swallows them whole.

In the winter he sleeps with his brothers and sisters, with the bottom of some pond or marsh for a bed, where they all pack themselves away, hundreds together, laid so closely that you can’t distinguish one from another.

But early in the spring you may hear their loud croaking; and when the March sun has thawed the ice from the ponds, the mother-frogs are all very busy with their eggs, which they leave in the shallow water,—­round jelly-like masses, like the one I told you of at the beginning of this story, made up of hundreds and hundreds of eggs.  For the frog mother hopes for a large family of children, and she knows, by sad experience, that no sooner are they born than the fishes snap them up by the dozen; and even after they have found their legs, and begin to feel old, and competent to take care of themselves, the snakes and the weasels will not hesitate to take two or three for breakfast, if they come in the way.  So you see the mother-frog has good reason for laying so many eggs.

The toads too, who, by the way, are cousins to the frogs, come down in April to lay their eggs also in the water,—­long necklaces of a double row of fine transparent eggs, each one showing its black dot, which is to grow into a tadpole, and swim about with its cousins, the frog tadpoles, while they all look so much alike that I fancy their own mothers do not know them apart.

I once picked up a handful of them, and took them home.  One grew up to be a charming little tree-toad, while some of his companions gave good promise, by their big awkward forms, of growing by and by into great bull-frogs.

GOLDEN-ROD AND ASTERS