Frogs' eggs are laid in compact masses, while toads' eggs are laid in strings or ropes; and in this way they can be recognized, though after they have once hatched the tadpoles of both are so much alike that they cannot be told apart. Sometimes the children will be disappointed because the tadpole does not change into a frog nor yet into a toad. It gets its four legs but does not lose its tail; it never loses its tail. In short, it is not a frog or a toad, but a salamander or water-lizard, which lays eggs similar to those of the frog, and whose young upon first hatching look very much like young tadpoles.
If eggs are found in a pond where frogs are not heard or seen, they will almost always turn out to be the eggs of a salamander.
X
THE BIRD
From the flower to the bird is a step easily taken if the parent prefers to omit the intermediate steps, or, after the story of the bird has been told, the stories of fish and frog can follow as occasion offers, instead of preceding it. The bird is peculiarly valuable in teaching the origin of life to the child, since in it we have such highly developed home and family instincts, the father bearing his share of the burden, illustrations of which are rare in the lower forms of life. As everywhere else, the best starting-point is with the life and interests of the bird itself, and for this caged birds are far better than the free ones, even though they may be only the sparrows and pigeons of the city streets.
The flight of birds is that which particularly interests children as well as every one else. Birds will soon learn to come to a place where they are fed regularly; and the style of flight, depending upon the size and shape of the wing as well as the shape of the bird's body, is a very interesting study. Many a country child knows the common birds by their flight even when the bird is too far away and moving too fast to be distinctly seen. What he generally does not think of is why the bird has this peculiar flight, and to have his attention called to it may increase his interest in watching the living bird.
Whatever increases the boy's interest in the live bird tends to decrease his desire to make it a dead bird; and the numerous good bird-books, as well as the substitution in so many cases of the camera for the gun, has tended to preserve the lives of the birds and to create a sentiment in favor of their preservation. If the young child is taught to watch the birds and care for them, he will not often, when older, thirst to take their lives.
While the flight of the bird may engage the first interest of the child, its manner of eating and drinking is worth attention, and the nature of its food is of the greatest importance. The shape of the bird's beak will decide, at least in a general way, the kind of food it eats; and a little study of birds will convince any one that all birds are useful to the agriculturist, either as destroyers of noxious insects or of weed seeds. While some birds swallow the seeds whole and pass them again unharmed, thus spreading the plant, others crack the seed coat and eat the contents, which of course destroys the seed. Even where the birds are the means of sowing seeds they do more good than harm; for the seeds thus sown are not often harmful, and those same birds destroy a vast number of noxious insects. Even owls and hawks, by destroying mice in the farmer's fields, do him a service that much more than compensates for the loss of an occasional chicken.
While the birds are of inestimable value to the farmer and to any one who has a garden, their influence on our lives in another direction is also very great, as difficult to estimate perhaps, as that of flowers. Who can doubt that these little brothers of the air are one of the most civilizing and elevating factors in man's daily life? Their song, their flight, their thousand and one charming or entertaining habits, their strong expression of personality, their poetical and mysterious comings and goings, appeal powerfully to the higher imagination.