The remaining history of the ball and its change is soon told. The egg within it soon hatches, the larva finding just a sufficiency of food to carry it to its full growth, when it transforms to a chrysalis, and at length to the tumble-bug like its parent. The formerly loose earth above him is now firmly packed, but he seems to know by instinct why those powerful front feet were given to him, and he is quickly working his way to the surface, and in a day or so is seen in the barn-yard rolling his ball as skilfully as his mother had done before him.
Such is the method always employed by the tumble-bug as I have seen him. And yet I have read in many natural histories, and have heard careful observers claim, that the hole is dug first and the ball rolled in. Perhaps they vary their plan, but I doubt it. Here is a matter for some of our boys and girls to look into.
Those Horse-hair Snakes
So they are called; and if the almost unanimous rustic opinion, with its ancient tradition and reliable witness, is to be credited, such they are in very truth. Indeed, there would seem to be few better attested facts in the whole range of natural history than the pedigree of this white or brown thread-like creature which is found in summer shallows and pools. Go where you will in the rural districts and it is the same old story. "They come from horse-hairs," and in some sections they are destined finally to become full-grown water-adders. It is commonly no mere theory. It is either an indisputable fact, tested by individual observation, or else is accepted as a matter of course, much as Pliny of old accepted the similar natural history "discoveries" of his time. He says, for example, on a similar subject, "I have heard many a man say that the marrow of a man's backbone will breed to a snake. And well it may so be, for surely there be many secrets in nature to us unknown, and much may come of hidden causes."
I have exchanged much comment on the subject of the hair snake with New England farmers. I have heard it claimed by one rural authority that a horse-hair bottled in water and placed in the sun will become a snake at second full moon. One prominent Granger, not to be outdone, went so far as to affirm that an old horse of his fell dead at the edge of the dam, and that the whole animal's tail squirmed off, and the pond was full of hair snakes in consequence. It becomes almost a matter of personal offence to the average countryman to question the truth of these statements. The hair snake is a fact—settled by their forefathers, and more true than ever to-day.
But snake stories, like fish stories, are always to be "taken with salt," and lest some of our younger readers may become converts to the rural authorities with whom they are perhaps associated in the summer outings, and in order also to relieve our long-suffering horse from this outrageous libel on its tail, it is well to settle our horse-hair snake story once and for all. To this end, I doubt if I can do better than to quote from memory a certain village store discussion of which the everlasting hair snake was the topic. I say "discussion," but this was hardly the proper term to apply to a general conversation in which all the parties seemed to agree. For some moments it consisted of anecdotes bearing on the subject, and each of the group had furnished his item of interest supporting the accepted theory of the horse-hair origin of the snake. Only one member of the company remained to be heard from, Amos Shoopegg, the village cobbler, who had kept silent, with somewhat sinister expression on his countenance as he listened with a sort of superior disdain to the various wonderful accounts, until at length, upon the recital of the story of the dead horse in the pond, he could contain himself no longer, and blurted out:
"Well, I swan, I never see sech a lot of dunceheels! I never hear sech fool talk since I's born. They ain't one on ye thet's got enny sense."