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Nicholeto Chordiman Directory 12
Page 08
The parent birds attracted my attention by appearing with food in their beaks, and by seeming much put out. Yet so wary were they of revealing the locality of their brood, or even of the precise tree that held them, that I lurked around over an hour without gaining a point on them. Finally a bright and curious boy who accompanied me secreted himself under a low, projecting rock close to the tree in which we supposed the nest to be, while I moved off around the mountain-side. It was not long before the youth had their secret. The tree, which was low and wide branching, and overrun with lichens, appeared at a cursory glance to contain not one dry or decayed limb. Yet there was one a few feet long, in which, when my eyes were piloted thither, I detected a small round orifice.
We saw large families of _ciancias_--beautiful birds with velvety black bodies speckled with white, and fan tails of rich brown colour, feathers of the same colour being also on the outer half of the wings. They possessed slender, most elegant necks, small brown-crested heads, and light yellow chests. Seen at a distance they were not, in shape, unlike pheasants. Twenty or thirty together at a time could be seen playing among the lower branches of the trees along the edge of the river. Then there were small birds of a beautiful metallic blue-black, with very long tails; these latter were innumerable near the water.
And thus the mystery of life is again repeated. The union of the living, microscopic bodies of the fertilizing principle with the new laid egg is followed by the growth of the two elements into a living creature, able to eat, to breathe, to see, to feel. In some unknown way the atom of fertilizing principle seems to have contained the whole life of the father-frog, for it can give to his sons and daughters any of his peculiarities, either of color, form, motion, or disposition; and the tiny egg seems to have contained the whole life of the mother-frog, and can give to her sons and daughters any of her peculiarities; though, as is true of all inheritance, the tadpoles, as the young frogs are called, share the natures of both parents, inheriting some peculiarities from the father and others from the mother.
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