KITTY AND THE HORSE-HAIR.
SUSAN and Jane called in, one afternoon,' to see Kitty King, and brought her a long horse-hair. Susy had one, and Jane had one. Kitty -was very glad. She went right away for a bowl of water, and put the horse-hair in. Mother was curious to know what the girls had got. She went,' and looking over their heads, asked what it was.
"Why, mamma, they say horse-hairs will turn to water-snakes, and we want to see them turn," said Kitty.
"Who says so?" asked mother.
"They," answered Kitty; "Alice Goodyear, Tom, and everybody."
"Did Alice or Tom ever see them turn?"
"I do not know as they ever saw them at it," said Kitty, "but they do turn. Tom says horse-troughs are full of them."
"Full of what?" asked Mrs. King.
"Snakes," cried Kitty.
"No, hairs," said Susy.
"I looked into two troughs at my uncle's, where horses drink, and I could not find either snakes or hairs," said Jane, "but I suppose they do turn."
"No horse-hair ever turned into a water-snake, girls," said Mrs. King; "it is not according to God's laws." And she left them, and went into the garden.
"Mamma, of course, does not know everything," whispered Kitty, much vexed because her mother did not think as she did. "She hasn't been to all places where horses drink. How can she tell what their hairs do when they get into the water?"
"What makes fishes?" said Susy.
"Yes," cried Kitty, "yes, indeed." Morning, noon, and night Kitty anxiously watched the horsehair in the water. Some time after, as papa was sitting after tea, he said, "Daughter, your horse-hair can never become a water-snake."
"Why not, papa?" asked Kitty hastily.
"Because it is a law of God, in creating things, that life brings forth life, and like produces like," he answered.
"I am sure I don't know what all that means," said Kitty in a puzzled tone. Papa put his hand into his seed-box, and took out a kernel of corn. "This kernel," he said, showing it to Kitty, "though hard and dry outside, has life inside. Plant it, and the life bursts out, and sprouts and grows up, and bears corn, not potatoes or carrots, but corn; and it is just so with a grain of the wheat—it produces its like, wheat. Would you not think it odd for an apple-tree to produce children—little girls hanging and growing on all its branches?" Kitty was much amused by the thought. "Things have no power to change their nature. A horse cannot turn to a snake."
"No more could a horse-hair," added Kitty quickly, by this time beginning to see that it was possible for her to be mistaken. "Then what did folks say so for?" asked she, casting a sidelong look at the horse-hair in, the bowl.
"Ignorance is apt to jump to wrong conclusions," said papa. "There is sometimes found in our brooks a long, black, thread-like worm, called horse-hair worm, because it looks like a horse-hair, not because it ever was one."
Kitty felt secretly glad there was something.
"Professor Brown has one," added her papa.
"Would you like to see it?" "Indeed, I would," said Kitty. The next day her papa took her to the professor's study, where the worm was in a bottle of water. It looked, Kitty thought, like a small tangle of black sewing-silk. He poured it out into a basin of water, and began to get out the tangles, when he found it was twisted round, and hugging up a bag of its eggs. It did not want to be straightened out; but it was, and proved to be half a yard long. While this was going on, its bag of eggs floated away, and Kitty wondered if the worm would care. Indeed it did. It moved right away toward the eggs, and tried to weave itself around them, like a kind mother protecting its young. The professor- then unwound it again.
In doing so the bag broke, and some of the eggs dropped out and floated off. It was curious to see the poor worm trying to find and bring them back to the nest. "So knowing," thought Kitty.
"Motherly instinct," said papa. The professor then opened the bag of eggs, or, rather, it was a roll of eggs about the size of a white coffee bean..
Re unrolled it, and how long do you think the roll was? Four yards long. Cutting it across and putting a bit of it under the microscope, he counted from seventy to seventy-five eggs, and he thought the whole number of eggs might be millions,
"Papa," asked Kitty, on their way home,
"What do you think of a horse-hair worm?"
"What do you, Kitty?" asked papa.
"I thought of the verse I learned the other morning, 'O Lord, how manifold are thy works!'" replied Kitty.
Selected.