8o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



chambers are specially large in the male and most used in the breeding 

 season. This Venezuelan frog, Rliinoderma Darwinii, seems to have only 

 an enormous development of this resonance chamber converted to the 

 singular purpose of harboring the young. As far as yet known, this frog 

 leads the van of progress from the selfishness of the common frog to the 

 altruism of the few; but there may remain to be discovered in tropical 

 regions other frogs with structures and habits even more advantageous 

 to the race and inconvenient to the individual. 



Granting that all the above accounts of the breeding habits of 

 frogs are reliable, they yet leave many details unknown. Very much 

 remains to be found out before we can know the complete life histories 

 of these remarkable creatures. Till we have a fuller knowledge, any 

 attempt at explanation of the breeding habits and structures of these 

 frogs would seem to be necessarily of a provisional nature. 



Though it is difficult to describe these frogs without ascribing to 

 them a far-seeing intelligence, the zoologist of to-day knows little 

 ground for such assumption. Still less does he see in such examples 

 of protection for the good of the race any direct acts of the Deity. 

 He commonly interprets them as the results of the working of natural 

 selection; and granting the potency of this means of evolution, the 

 application to the above life-histories seems not difficult. 



But it has been said that science is not concerned with the why, 

 but only with the question, 'What is it precisely that does happen'" 

 Shall we not work for more complete knowledge of the facts in the 

 hope of a clearer view of the interconnection of organisms and environ- 

 ment? 



May not our present attempts to understand such problems seem, 

 in the future, as unscientific as does at present the fancy of the Jap- 

 anese poet, who, centuries since, wrote: 



'' With hands resting on the ground, reverentially you repeat your poem, 

 O Frog." 



