is not. They know
that there are elephants; they know that there have been flying dragons;
and the wiser they are, the less inclined they will be to say positively
that there are no water-babies.

No water-babies, indeed? Why, wise men of old said that everything on
earth had its double in the water; and you may see that that is, if not
quite true, still quite as true as most other theories which you are
likely to hear for many a day. There are land-babies--then why not
water-babies? _Are there not water-rats, water-flies, water-crickets,
water-crabs, water-tortoises, water-scorpions, water-tigers and
water-hogs, water-cats and water-dogs, sea-lions and sea-bears,
sea-horses and sea-elephants, sea-mice and sea-urchins, sea-razors and
sea-pens, sea-combs and sea-fans; and of plants, are there not
water-grass, and water-crowfoot, water-milfoil, and so on, without end?_

"But all these things are only nicknames; the water things are not
really akin to the land things."

That's not always true. They are, in millions of cases, not only of the
same family, but actually the same individual creatures. Do not even you
know that a green drake, and an alder-fly, and a dragon-fly, live under
water till they change their skins, just as Tom changed his? And if a
water animal can continually change into a land animal, why should not
a land animal sometimes change into a water animal? Don't be put down by
any of Cousin Cramchild's arguments, but stand up to him like a man, and
answer him (quite respectfully, of course) thus:--

If Cousin Cramchild says, that if there are water-babies, they must grow
into water-men, ask him how he knows that they do not? and then, how he
knows that they must, any more than the Proteus of the Adelsberg caverns
grows into a perfect newt.

If he says that it is too strange a transformation for a land-baby to
turn into a water-baby, ask him if he ever heard of the transformation
of Syllis, or the Distomas, or the common jelly-fish, of which M.
Quatrefages says excellently well--"Who would not exclaim that a miracle
had come to pass, if he saw a reptile come out of the egg dropped by the
hen in his poultry-yard, and the reptile give birth at once to an
indefinite number of fishes and birds? Yet the history of the jelly-fish
is quite as wonderful as that would be." Ask him if he knows about all
this; and if he does not, tell him to go and look for himself; and
advise him (very respectfully, of course) t