he common things before our eyes. Our
_savans_ still confess their inability to discriminate with certainty
the egg or tadpole of a frog from that of a toad; and it is strange that
these hopping creatures, which seem so unlike, should coincide so nearly
in their juvenile career, while the tritons and salamanders, which
border so closely on each other in their maturer state as sometimes to
be hardly distinguishable, yet choose different methods and different
elements for laying their eggs. The eggs of our salamanders or
land-lizards are deposited beneath the moss on some damp rock, without
any gelatinous envelope; they are but few in number, and the anxious
mamma may sometimes be found coiled in a circle around them, like the
symbolic serpent of eternity.

The small number of birds yet present in early April gives a better
opportunity for careful study,--more especially if one goes armed with
that best of fowling-pieces, a small spy-glass: the best,--since how
valueless for purposes of observation is the bleeding, gasping, dying
body, compared with the fresh and living creature, as it tilts,
trembles, and warbles on the bough before you! Observe that robin in the
oak-tree's top: as he sits and sings, every one of the dozen different
notes which he flings down to you is accompanied by a separate flirt and
flutter of his whole body, and, as Thoreau says of the squirrel, "each
movement seems to imply a spectator," and to imply, further, that the
spectator is looking through a spy-glass. Study that song-sparrow: why
is it that he always goes so ragged in spring, and the bluebird so
neat? is it that the song-sparrow is a wild artist, absorbed in the
composition of his lay, and oblivious of ordinary proprieties, while the
smooth bluebird and his ash-colored mate cultivate their delicate warble
only as a domestic accomplishment, and are always nicely dressed before
sitting down to the piano? Then how exciting is the gradual arrival of
the birds in their summer-plumage! to watch it is as good as sitting at
the window on Easter Sunday to observe the new bonnets. Yonder, in that
clump of alders by the brook, is the delicious jargoning of the first
flock of yellow-birds; there are the little gentlemen in black and
yellow, and the little ladies in olive-brown; "sweet, sweet, sweet" is
the only word they say, and often they will so lower their ceaseless
warble, that, though almost within reach, the little minstrels seem far
away. The