like real poetry! The stamen in a flower, and growth, and a ray of
sunlight are all one at bottom!"

"Yes, darling, it is beautiful poetry, when one comes thoroughly to
understand it. And when we find that love is the source of all these
different forms and processes it becomes more beautiful than ever. Now
let us go on a little further and you will see how that is."

"Please hurry, mamma!" said Elsie. "I wish to find out where I came
from, and you are going to tell me that, aren't you?"

"Certainly, darling! That is what I have been leading up to all this
time. Now we will speak of a number of higher growths than the single
cells are, for there are several things yet to be made plain before
you will be able to understand the highest growth of all, which is
that of a human being like yourself."

VI

WHERE BABY ANIMALS COME FROM

At that moment there sounded a hoarse noise near by, which was
followed by a splash, as if some body had tumbled into the pond. Elsie
looked at her mother roguishly and said:

"Old Croaky!"

Old Croaky was a granddaddy bullfrog with whom they were very well
acquainted, for he sang for them every evening.

"I am glad that he spoke just as he did," Mrs. Edson smiled, "for he
reminds me that frogs are as good an example as I can take next. He
belongs to one of the lower classes of animals, not so very much
higher than the plants. Now, in the plants, you will remember, it was
necessary for the pollen to enter the ovary in order to reach and
fertilize the seeds. But with the frog it is not so. The female lays
the eggs first, and just as she is doing so the male places himself in
such a position towards her that he can mingle his zoosperms with her
eggs as they come out. That fertilizes them and they immediately begin
to grow. First they become tadpoles, and then little frogs."

"What, was Old Croaky ever a little tadpole, mumsey?"

"Yes, darling, he was. Every frog was once. And before that he was an
egg, one of many, in his mother's ovary, and it is so with all
animals. They all of them have eggs and zoosperms, just as the plants
have pollen and seeds. Only, with most of the animals, the zoosperms
must enter the ovary in order to fertilize the eggs, as is the way of
the plants. And it is the same with the birds. They are higher, that
is later, in the scale of life than the frogs are. Now the higher the
creature the more complicated becomes the process of reproduction,
even th