CHAPTER IX 

 FROGS AND BIRDS 



While the life-history of most of the backboned animals 

 shows no such startling transformations or metamorphoses 

 as that of the insects we have studied, yet among toads, 

 frogs, and salamanders, forming the class of backboned 

 animals known as amphibians or batrachians, there is an 

 interesting and well-marked metamorphosis. A newly 

 hatched bird is much smaller and weaker than its parents, 

 its feathers are different, and it usually has to be cared for 

 and fed for some time, but it is unmistakably birdlike in 

 appearance, and its development to adult form is gradual 

 and without startling changes. The same is true of kittens 

 and puppies, or young lions or camels, and true, also, for 

 the most part, of fishes and of snakes and lizards. But the 

 young toad or frog, which we call tadpole, looks, and truly 

 is, much more like a fish than like its parent, and therefore 

 in its growth and development it undergoes a marked trans- 

 formation. 



The eggs and hatching. In the spring, April and May, 

 the frogs and toads begin their croaking and trilling, and 

 then is the time to look in the ponds for the eggs. Indeed 

 the ponds had better be watched as soon as the ice goes out. 

 Hunt in the shallow water along the banks. Toads' eggs lie 

 in long strings of a gelatinous, jelly-like substance, usually 

 wound about submerged sticks or the stems of water-plants, 

 while those of the frog are found in small bunches or masses 

 of the jelly. They are small, shining, black, and bead- 

 like, and in the toad strings are arranged in single rows. 



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