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Cornugaya Directory 03
Page 07
On leaving Montrigone, with a pleasant sense of having made
acquaintance with a new and, in many respects, interesting work, I
could not get the sacristan and our difference of opinion out of my
head. What, I asked myself, are the differences that unhappily
divide Christendom, and what are those that divide Christendom from
modern schools of thought, but a seeing of Joachims as the Virgin's
grandmothers on a larger scale? True, we cannot call figures
Joachim when we know perfectly well that they are nothing of the
kind; but I registered a vow that henceforward when I called
Joachims the Virgin's grandmothers I would bear more in mind than I
have perhaps always hitherto done, how hard it is for those who have
been taught to see them as Joachims to think of them as something
different. I trust that I have not been unfaithful to this vow in
the preceding article. If the reader differs from me, let me ask
him to remember how hard it is for one who has got a figure well
into his head as the Virgin's grandmother to see it as Joachim.
Tree-frogs have, of course, in most circumstances much greater
difficulty in getting at water than pond-frogs; and this is especially
true in certain tropical or desert districts. Hence most of the frogs
which inhabit such regions have had to find out or invent some
ingenious plan for passing through the tadpole stage with a minimum of
moisture. The devices they have hit upon are very curious. Some of
them make use of the little pools collected at the bases of huge
tropical leaf-stalks, like those of the banana plant; others dispense
with the aid of water altogether, and glue their new-laid eggs to
their own backs, where the fry pass through the tadpole stage with the
slimy mucus which surrounds them. Nature always discovers such cunning
schemes to get over apparent difficulties in her way: and the
tree-frogs have solved the problem for themselves in half a dozen
manners in different localities. Oddest of all, perhaps, is the dodge
invented by "Darwin's frog," a Chilean species, in which the male
swallows the eggs as soon as laid, and gulps them into the
throat-pouch beneath his capacious neck: there they hatch out and pass
through their tadpole stage: and when at last they arrive at frogly
maturity, they escape into the world through the mouth of their
father.
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