350 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



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c=£ WRITE 

 W/lftT VOU HftVE- 



SEEM 



THE FUN OF 



FOR YOUNB FOLKS 



t-}' , EDITED BY '." 



Edward FBigelow 



W^W YOU WftNT 

 TO KMOW. 



^5ount 



ich , Conn. 



Grandma's Toad. 



Salem, Oregon. 



To the Editor : — ■ 



Oh, yes r I know he is ugly, and that the 

 boys say he will make warts on your hands 

 if you touch him, but Grandma calls him her 

 garden pet. 



She says' he keeps the garden free from 

 slugs and other things that do harm. See 

 how his' sides pouch out. Grandma says that 

 he has just finished eating a dozen or more 

 slugs for his early breakfast. 



She says that many ugly things in the world 

 are more useful than the pretty ones, and I 

 believe it. Don't you? 



Jeanette Sykes. 



Nothing at ArcAdiA has attracted 

 more attention than the hatching last 

 spring of innumerable toads. In Nym- 

 phalia we dug a small pond in the form 

 of a Swiss cross in which the white 

 lily, the emblem of the The Agassiz 

 Association, is to be grown. This 

 cross was filled with water. To it 

 came a great number of toads. The 



GRANDMA'S TOAD. 



water was filled with toads' eggs and 

 when the little toads hatched, it was 

 a seething mass of tiny tadpoles. In 

 a short time the tails became shorter 

 and the legs began to appear. Then 

 the cross and the ground in the vicin- 

 ity were full of the little hoppers that 

 some young people said looked like 

 jumping flies. As one viewed the cross 

 the swarm of jumpers did resemble a 

 swarm of flies, but in their actions were 

 like grasshoppers. It would be a con- 

 servative estimate to place the num- 

 ber at least six thousand toads. 



The best general account of the 

 toad is to be found in "The Frog 

 Book" by Mary C. Dickerson, publish- 

 ed by Doubleday, Page & Company. 

 From that book we quote as follows : 



"For some time before the comoletion of the 

 metamorphosis, the tadpoles prefer to be 

 wholly or partially out of water.- This fact 

 shows that lungs have quite taken the place 

 of the internal gills, and that our little water 

 animals have been converted into land ani- 

 mals. If confined in deep water, tadpoles' 

 constantly rush frantically to the top to ex- 

 change a bubble of foul air for one of fresh, 

 and they will finally drown if not eiven oppor- 

 tunity to stay above water. 



"Just as soon as thev lose the tails, toads 

 are likely to leave the pond — a whole army of 

 atoms of life, so small and so like the ground 

 that if their numbers' were few we should 

 scarcely see one of them, or if we did, 

 might think the little hoppins" thins - merely a 

 cricket. But sometimes the day of their final 

 transformation coincides with the day of a 

 gentle rain. A hnr>pv coincidence it seems for 

 them, but it is likely to prove rather tragic 

 instead. They cover the sidewalks and the 

 roadways : and before each individual of the 

 migrating multitude finds a sheltered corner 

 he can call home, many hundreds have lost 

 their lives under the wheels of carriages and 

 the feet of hurrying pedestrians'. The same 

 apparent "deluge" of toads may come if a 

 warm rain occurs shortly after the time of 

 their change to land animals. They are so 

 delicate at first, so used to life in the water, 

 that they travel only when the air is moist. 

 This means that thev will leave their native 



