Do
not even you know that a green drake, and an alder-fly, and a
dragon-fly, live under water till they change their skins, just as
Tom changed his? And if a water animal can continually change into
a land animal, why should not a land animal sometimes change into a
water animal? Don't be put down by any of Cousin Cramchild's
arguments, but stand up to him like a man, and answer him (quite
respectfully, of course) thus:-
If Cousin Cramchild says, that if there are water-babies, they must
grow into water-men, ask him how he knows that they do not? and
then, how he knows that they must, any more than the Proteus of the
Adelsberg caverns grows into a perfect newt.
If he says that it is too strange a transformation for a land-baby
to turn into a water-baby, ask him if he ever heard of the
transformation of Syllis, or the Distomas, or the common jelly-
fish, of which M. Quatrefages says excellently well--"Who would not
exclaim that a miracle had come to pass, if he saw a reptile come
out of the egg dropped by the hen in his poultry-yard, and the
reptile give birth at once to an indefinite number of fishes and
birds? Yet the history of the jelly-fish is quite as wonderful as
that would be.
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