"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."
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 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 zoösperms 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 zoösperms, just as the plants have pollen and seeds. Only, with most of the animals, the zoösperms 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 though the principle is always the same. It is always growth, always the life within, forcing itself out to take form, and it is only the forms that change. The life and force within are the same that the first single cell had."