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This Book List Sectory 03
Page 10
As though the new spring-life were too plentiful to find room in the frogs and toads already existing, it calls for more frogs and toads; and new creatures are born to share the extra vitality. Like the flowers and the fish, the frogs, too, give forth new life. Within them, too, the miracle is performed. The tiny eggs of the one wake up and begin to grow. The tiny living bodies in the fertilizing principle of the other also wake up and begin to grow. But higher life is better guarded, because less prolific. The frog and the toad lay but few eggs as compared with the fish. Fish eggs may drop under the stones or float away, and so escape the vital touch of the fertilizing principle. There are so many that numbers may be lost and yet enough remain to continue the family. Not so with the frog family. No egg may be lost. So we find that the eggs of the frog are not dropped singly, like so many shot, but are bound together by a colorless, transparent, jelly-like substance, much like that found in the morning-glory seed, and which like that supplies nourishment to the young life, for the tadpole feeds upon it until he is able to seek other food. Moreover, instinct has taught the frog the need of extreme caution in the act of fertilization. Every egg _must_ be fertilized. As the time draws near for the dropping of the few eggs into the water, the male frog so places himself that the moment the eggs are being laid, he pours over them, one by one, as they fall into the water, the fertilizing fluid.
Higher up in the scale of life we get many instances which show various stages in the same progressive development towards greater care for the safety and education of the young. Among the larger lizards, for example, a distinct advance may be traced between the comparatively uncivilized American alligator and his near ally, the much more cultivated African crocodile. On the banks of the Mississippi, the alligator lays a hundred eggs or thereabouts, which she deposits in a nest near the water's edge, and then covers them up with leaves and other decaying vegetable matter. The fermentation of these leaves produces heat and so does for the alligator's eggs what sitting does for those of hens and other birds: the mother deputes her maternal functions, so to speak, to a festering heap of decomposing plant-refuse. Nevertheless, she loiters about all the time, like Miriam round the ark which contained Moses, to see what happens; and when the eggs hatch out, she leads her little ones down to the river, and there makes alligators of them. This is a simple and relatively low stage in the nursery arrangements of the big lizards.
Chuganaai at once sent for Doh, the Fly, to come and erect a _kache{~COMBINING BREVE~}_, or sweat-house. It took but a short time to put up the framework, which Stenatlihan covered closely with four heavy clouds: a black cloud on the east, a blue one on the south, a yellow one on the west, and a white one on the north. Out in front of the doorway, at the east, she spread a soft red cloud for a foot-blanket after the sweat. Twelve stones were heated in a fire, and four of them placed in the _kache{~COMBINING BREVE~}_. Kuterastan, Stenatlihan, Chuganaai, and Hadintin Skhin each inspected the sweat-house and pronounced it well made. The three newcomers were bidden to enter and were followed by Chuganaai, Nilchidilhkizn, Ndidilhkizn, Nokuse, and Doh. The eight sang songs as their sweat began. Chuganaai led, singing four songs, and each of the others followed in turn with the same number. They had had a good sweat by the time the songs were finished, so Stenatlihan removed the black cloud and all came out. She then placed the three strangers on the red-cloud blanket, and under the direction of Kuterastan made for them fingers, toes, mouth, eyes, ears, hair, and nose. Then Kuterastan bade them welcome, making the boy, whom he called Yadilhkih Skhin, Sky Boy, chief of the sky and its people. The second he named Nigostu{~COMBINING BREVE~}n Nali{~COMBINING BREVE~}n, Earth Daughter, and placed her in charge of the earth and its crops; while to the third, Hadinin Nali{~COMBINING BREVE~}n, Pollen Girl, was assigned the care of the health of the earth's people. This duty also devolved upon Hadintin Skhin, but each looks more to the welfare of his own sex than to that of the other.
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