n our way back to work we pause and stand to see the ground-spider make
its trap, bury itself in the sand, and then wait for the falling in of
its enemy.

Further on walks a horned beetle, and near him starts open the door of
a spider, who peeps out carefully, and quickly pulls it down again. On
a karoo-bush a green fly is laying her silver eggs. We carry them home,
and see the shells pierced, the spotted grub come out, turn to a green
fly, and flit away. We are not satisfied with what Nature shows us, and
we see something for ourselves. Under the white hen we put a dozen eggs,
and break one daily, to see the white spot wax into the chicken. We are
not excited or enthusiastic about it; but a man is not to lay his throat
open, he must think of something. So we plant seeds in rows on our
dam-wall, and pull one up daily to see how it goes with them. Alladeen
buried her wonderful stone, and a golden palace sprung up at her feet.
We do far more. We put a brown seed in the earth, and a living thing
starts out--starts upward--why, no more than Alladeen can we say--starts
upward, and does not desist till it is higher than our heads, sparkling
with dew in the early morning, glittering with yellow blossoms, shaking
brown seeds with little embryo souls on to the ground. We look at it
solemnly, from the time it consists of two leaves peeping above the
ground and a soft white root, till we have to raise our faces to look at
it; but we find no reason for that upward starting.

We look into dead ducks and lambs. In the evening we carry them home,
spread newspapers on the floor, and lie working with them till midnight.
With a started feeling near akin to ecstasy we open the lump of flesh
called a heart, and find little doors and strings inside. We feel them,
and put the heart away; but every now and then return to look, and to
feel them again. Why we like them so we can hardly tell.

A gander drowns itself in our dam. We take it out, and open it on the
bank, and kneel looking at it. Above are the organs divided by delicate
tissues; below are the intestines artistically curved in a spiral form,
and each tier covered by a delicate network of blood-vessels standing
out red against the faint blue background. Each branch of the
blood-vessels is comprised of a trunk, bifurcating and rebifurcating
into the most delicate, hair-like threads, symmetrically arranged. We
are struck with its singular beauty. And, moreover--and here we drop
from o