Among the frogs is the curious tingeing frog (Hylaplesia tinctoria), which is an inhabitant of the forest. It may be seen during the day crawling along the branches, but at night it takes up its abode under the loose bark. Except during the breeding season, it seldom visits the water. It then, like the rest of its species, goes there for the purpose of depositing its eggs. It is generally of a dark colour—sometimes quite black—with a white spot on the head and two white lines running along each side.
It gains its name from the use the Indians are said to make of it. They employ it as they do the parrot-fish, to give a different colour to the plumage of their parrots. To do this they pull out the feathers from the spots to which they wish to impart a new tint, and then rub the blood of the frog into the wounded skin. When the new feathers grow, they are said to be of a bright yellow or vermilion hue.
The bi-coloured tree-frog (Phyllomedusa bicolour) is of considerable size, and is the only one of its family at present known. The upper part of the body is of the deepest azure-blue, while the under parts are of a pure white, sometimes of a rosy tinge. The thighs and sides are spotted with the same tinge as the abdomen.
Darwin found a curious little toad, the Phryniscus nigricans, on the dry sandy soil of the Pampas, “which looked,” he says, “as if it had been steeped in the blackest ink, and then, when dry, allowed to crawl over a board freshly painted with the brightest vermilion.”
Instead of being nocturnal in its habits, as other toads are, and living in obscure recesses, it crawls about over dry hillocks and arid plains during the day, where not a single drop of water can be found. It depends on the dew for its moisture, which is probably absorbed by the skin. The creature seems to dread water, and is utterly unable to swim.
The Surinam Toad.
The Surinam toad is one of the most curious, though, at the same time, among the most hideous of batrachians. It is remarkable on account of the extraordinary way in which its young are developed. The skin of the female is separated, as is the case with others of its family, from the muscles of the back, and is nearly half an inch thick. She deposits her eggs, or spawn, at the brink of some stagnant water, when the male manages to take them up in his paws and places them on her back, where they adhere by means of a glutinous secretion, and are pressed into cells which, at that time, are open to receive them. Gradually the cells are closed by a membrane which grows over them, when her back greatly resembles a piece of honeycomb, the cells of which are filled and closed.
Here, in the course of about three months, the eggs are hatched, and the creatures undergo the usual change of the rest of the genus; first assuming the form of tadpoles, and gradually acquiring their complete shape. When perfected, and possessed of their limbs, they work their way out of the cells; and it is a curious sight to see them struggling out—their head and paws projecting in all directions from their mother’s back—and sliding down on the ground, when they begin to hop merrily about.
The cells are considerably deeper than wide, and each would contain an ordinary bean thrust endwise into it. The head of the creature is of an unusual shape, as it has a snout with nostrils lengthened into a kind of tube. The skin is of a brownish-olive above, and white below; and is covered with a number of small, hard granules, with some horny tubercular projections among them. After the brood have left the mother’s back, the cells again fill up—the whole process occupying about eight days.