me; but after that, and for the
rest of her life, she crept in strange unfroglike fashion, raised high
on all four limbs, with her stubby tail curled upward, and reaching
out one weird limb after another. If one's hand approached within a
foot, she saw it and stretched forth appealing, skinny fingers.

At two o'clock she was clad in a general cinnamon buff; then a shade
of glaucous green began to creep over head and upper eyelids, onward
over her face, finally coloring body and limbs. Beneath, the little
pollyfrog fairly glowed with bright apricot orange, throat and tail
amparo purple, mouth green, and sides rich pale blue. To this maze of
color we must add a strange, new expression, born of the prominent
eyes, together with the line of the mouth extending straight back with
a final jeering, upward lift; in front, the lower lip thick and
protruding, which, with the slanting eyes, gave a leering, devilish
smirk, while her set, stiff, exact posture compelled a vivid thought
of the sphinx. Never have I seen such a remarkable combination. It
fascinated us. We looked at Guinevere, and then at the tadpoles
swimming quietly in their tank, and evolution in its wildest
conceptions appeared a tame truism.

This was the acme of Guinevere's change, the pinnacle of her
development. Thereafter her transformations were rhythmical,
alternating with the day and night. Through the nights of activity she
was garbed in rich, warm brown. With the coming of dawn, as she
climbed slowly upward, her color shifted through chestnut to maroon;
this maroon then died out on the mid-back to a delicate, dull
violet-blue, which in turn became obscured in the sunlight by
turquoise, which crept slowly along the sides. Carefully and
laboriously she clambered up, up to the topmost frond, and there
performed her little toilet, scraping head and face with her hands,
passing the hinder limbs over her back to brush off every grain of
sand. The eyes had meanwhile lost their black-flecked, golden,
nocturnal iridescence, and had gradually paled to a clear silvery
blue, while the great pupil of darkness narrowed to a slit.

Little by little her limbs and digits were drawn in out of sight, and
the tiny jeweled being crouched low, hoping for a day of comfortable
clouds, a little moisture, and a swift passage of time to the next
period of darkness, when it was fitting and right for Guineveres to
seek their small meed of sustenance, to grow to frog's full estate,