White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1933-03-02


breathe the air freely; for, as we have
seen, his nostrils have been function
ing for some time as air-breathing
organs.
With the formation of his legs his
head structure has likewise changed.
The scraping black beak gave place to
the wide mouth characteristic of the
adult frog, the staring eyes acquired
lids and nictitating membrane, a
tympanum appeared, definite color
pattern showed on the skin, and some
glandular cells arranged themselves in
characteristic roughened areas all over
the back.
Only the tail remains to tell of his
former aquatic habits. Day by day it,
too, is absorbed into the body, just as
were the gills in the very early stages,
until at last our little frog is complete
ly metamorphosed and can go freely
on shore with his brothers to catch
flies among the plants bordering his
ancestral pool.
the next two or three months his only
occupation is eating and preventing
himself from being eaten-enough to-
keep him busy and on the alert every
instant.
At the approach of the sharp autumn
weather he is about half an inch in
length and half-grown. While he has
no voice as yet, the mating call of his
elders may occasionally be heard in
the pool as late as September, for
frogs are active over long period Of
the year and the breeding season may
be said to last from April to Septem-
Der, reaching a peak at several diff
ferent times, as warm weather and
heavy rainfall favor 1t.
At the onset of winter everything is
silent, but with sleep, not death. Near
the borders of the pond, buried under
logs and stones in the mud, the little
frogs have begun Information for the
winter. A wise provision of nature
slows down their life processes to suit
them to this complete inactivity and
apparent hamilton
Many Species Are Known.
While there are about two thousand
species of tailless amphibians, we lack
a corresponding number of common
names for them. We must perforce
call everything by the name of frog"
or toad" although the several fam
lilies grouped together as ''toads," for
| instance. may be as different struc-
| turally and in habits from the true
| toad. as the lion is different from the
! camel, although both are mammals.
While most tailless amphibians de-
post their eggs in water, with the
| tailed aquatic tadpole stage interven-
ing between egg and adult, there is
one trorical American genus, Eleu-
therodactylus, in which the young frog
completes his metamorphosis entirely
inside the egg capsule, and when it is
finally time for him to sally forth he
comes out and hops away among the
tree tops with no tail to impede him.
Other tropical frogs lay their eggs
in the rain-flled axils of giant palm
leaves perhaps a hundred feet high in
the air. Here It is truly case Of
rock-a bye baby on the tree top to-
the little frog baby.
In his wind-rocked cradle Of rain
water he may have strange bedfellows-
Such a bronchial reservoir from
Jamaica yielded a young Eleutherodac-
tylus and tadpoles belonging to two
species of frogs, some small crabs,
grasshoppers, arboreal cockroaches, a
tarantula, and some earthworms,
which live high in the air in the quart
or two of soil and water which collects
in the functions of leaves with stem.
SHOWERS" Of frogs and toads have
been mentioned I'm the literature OF
! very early times. and. while some or
the tales are exaggerated. we know
that showers of organic matter actual
ly do occur when the entire contents
of pond are sucked up by a whirl-
wind and dropped perhaps miles away
from their point Of origin.
Peculiar superstitions exist about
toads and frogs in many countries.
Since most races of men observe close
lv only those creatures which are
either directly usef,rl to them or poten.
tially Injurious. the majority of the
amnh,bians escaped anything resem-
hing close and protracted study until
relatively recent years. 1t was not
until about two centuries ago that the
facts Of Information were definitely
known to science. Before that time it
was believed that frogs were procre-
ated from the mud-an idea proposed
nv no less an observer than the ilias.
trious Aristotle himself.