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Gallegallo Revbrandia Sectory 10
Page 06
The interior of Greenland to-day is covered by one vast sea of ice. Explorers have traversed its surface for many miles; not a plant, or stone, or patch of earth is to be seen. In the Winter it is a snow-swept waste. In the Summer streams of ice-cold water flow over its surface, penetrating here and there by crevasses to unknown depths. This great glacier is some twelve hundred miles long, by four hundred in width.<3> Vast as it is, it is utterly insignificant as compared with the great continental glacier that geologists assure us once held in its grasp the larger portion of North America.
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.
Further, our student must submit to a thorough grounding in world-geography with its physical and human sides welded firmly together. He must be able to pick out on the map the headquarters of all the more notable peoples, not merely as they are now, but also as they were at various outstanding moments of the past. His next business is to master the main facts about the natural conditions to which each people is subjected--the climate, the conformation of land and sea, the animals and plants. From here it is but a step to the economic life--the food-supply, the clothing, the dwelling-places, the principal occupations, the implements of labour. A selected list of books of travel must be consulted. No less important is it to work steadily through the show-cases of a good ethnological museum. Nor will it suffice to have surveyed the world by regions. The communications between regions--the migrations and conquests, the trading and the borrowing of customs--must be traced and accounted for. Finally, on the basis of their distribution, which the learner must chart out for himself on blank maps of the world, the chief varieties of the useful arts and appliances of man can be followed from stage to stage of their development.
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