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The "lake" was a pond, perhaps twenty feet in diameter; an antiquated boot, two or three abandoned milk cans, and a dead cat, reposed upon its placid beach; and from a sheltered nook upon its southerly side, an early-aroused frog appeared, inquiringly, and uttered a cry of surprise or, perhaps, of warning. "Take me away?" exclaimed Sophronia, "It was a dream a fateful dream."
Most travellers cannot fail to have noticed how clay-pans recently filled by rain, even after a prolonged drought, swarm with tadpoles and full-grown frogs and numberless water insects, the presence of which must only be explained by the ability of the frog to store his supply in his own body, and the fact that the eggs of the insects require moisture before they can hatch out.
In the same way the putrid frog emits and disseminates around it atoms of putrescence which travel to a considerable distance and so attract and delight the Necrophorus, the carrion-beetle. But in the case of the Great Peacock or the Oak Eggar, what molecules are actually disengaged? None, according to our sense of smell.
Winter held on tenaciously and mercilessly, but it has let go. The great sun is high on his northern journey, and the vegetation, and the bird-singing, and the loud frog- chorus, the tree budding and blowing, are all upon us; and the glorious grass super-best of earth's garniture with its ever-satisfying green. The king-birds have come, and the corn-planter, the scolding bob-o-link.
On the shores of certain subterranean lakes which exist in Carniola, a country subject at this time to Austria, there are to be found batrachians far more ambitious than our frog namely, the proteans. These cumulate rather than change: they become reptiles without ceasing to be fishes, if I may so express it; they develop lungs as they grow up, and yet keep their gills.
Well, he found a nice, soft place under a pile of hay, and there he stretched out to slumber as nicely as if he were in his bed at home. He even snored a little bit, I believe, or else it was Bully Frog croaking one of his songs. The day passed, and the sun went down, and it got all ready to be night, and still Uncle Wiggily slept on soundly.
Bully, the frog, made one more jump, hoping to reach the kite, and pull it down, but he might as well have tried to jump over the moon, which only a hey-diddle-diddle-cat-and-the-fiddle-cow can do.
"You ought to go to Grandfather Frog for this one, because Sticky-toes is really a Frog and not a Toad. But we are all cousins, and I don't mind telling you about Sticky-toes, or rather about his great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather, who was the first of the family ever to climb a tree. You see, it is all in the family, and I am very proud of my family, which is one of the very oldest."
"And besides, I must hurry away and find Ferdinand Frog. I want my new coat as soon as I can get it. And the longer I stay here, the more time I shall lose." So in spite of all Peter Mink could say, Timothy slipped into Black Creek and swam away. Somebody had knocked. And with a wide smile upon his face Mr. Ferdinand Frog, the tailor, went to his door and peeped out. One look was enough.
He could as soon play at leap- frog or at cricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself. But he is so much the better off than his sister that on his narrow world of fact an opening has dawned into such broader regions as lie within the ken of Mr. Guppy. Hence his admiration and his emulation of that shining enchanter.
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