The winners in life's race

by Arabella B. Buckley

It is curious to notice the quiet leisurely waddle of the sluggish toad, as he spreads out his short fat legs and puffs out his warty skin, and to compare him with the nervous, anxious, little frog, starting at every danger. And still more curious is it to see him getting out of his skin, as he does several times a year. For his skin does not peel off in pieces as it does in the watery frogs, but splits along his back; then he wriggles about till it lies in folds on his sides and hips, and, putting one of his hind feet between the front ones, draws the skin off the leg like a stocking off a foot. With the other leg he does the same, and then, drawing out his front legs, pulls the whole skin forward, and stripping it over his head, swallows it; thus deliberately putting his old coat inside him, and appearing in one that is glossy, fresh, and new. The toad has many enemies in spite of his acrid taste, and he shows his wisdom by hiding in walls and under stones in the daytime, and coming out in the dusk of evening to hunt the beetles and grubs so often out of reach of the water-loving frog.

Fig. 19.

The Flying Tree-Frog of New Guinea[62] (Wallace).

But the toad is not the only land relation of the frog; there are others of the group that venture even farther from water; for in most parts of the world (though not in England), tree-frogs, with sucking disks at the ends of their toes and fingers, climb the trees and hunt for insects among the leaves and branches; while in Borneo Mr. Wallace found one ([Fig. 19]) with webbed feet, which it spread out, and so flew down from the trees. There are plenty of the ordinary tree-climbing frogs to be seen in the south of France, their small green bodies peeping out from under the dull gray olive-leaves; and to be heard, too, in an endless chorus all night long when the spring arrives.

But how can these tree-dwellers bring up their little ones in water? Some of them come down and lay their eggs in the ponds, and even sleep down in the mud in winter. Others lay their eggs in little puddles of water in the hollows of the trees, and there the young ones live their tadpole life; while in one curious tree-frog of Mexico, called the Nototrema, the mother has a pouch in her back, and the father places the eggs in it for the little tadpoles to live in a moist home till they leap out as perfect frogs.

Nor is this the only case in which fathers and mothers take care of their young. In one species of frogs living near Paris, the father[63] winds the long string of gluey eggs round his thighs, and buries himself in the ground till the young tadpoles are ready to come out, and then he leaps into the water. And in one of the tongueless toads, the Surinam toad,[64] the mother’s soft skin swells up, forming ridges and hollows, and when her eggs are laid the father clasps them in his feet, and, leaping on her back, puts an egg into each hollow. Then the mother goes into the water, and remains there while each tadpole completes its changes in its own hole, jumping out at last a finished toad.

Yet, in spite of curious habits such as these, the frogs and their companions on the whole lead a very monotonous life. They are, it is true, more intelligent than fish, and have learned to know more of the world, but in the long ages that have passed since their ancestors roamed in the coal-forest marshes, other and higher animals have taken possession of the land, and left room only for a few scattered groups of amphibia. Still, however, they remain hovering between two lives, and filling such spots as neither the fishes nor the land animals can occupy; and when we hear them croaking in the quiet night, or see them leaping on the marshy ground, they remind us that we have still living in our day, a link between the fish whose world is a world of waters, and the air-breathing animals which have become masters of the land.

THE REPTILES IN THEIR PALMY DAYS.