258 hylidj:. 



prognostics — a conclusion which my own experience 

 can only confirm. 



The tree-frog lives well in confinement, feeding 

 readily on flies and mealworms ; a man of the name 

 of Papst, in Gotha, is said to have kept one for 

 twenty-two years. 



In Central Europe pairing takes place in April or 

 beginning of May, mostly at night, and lasts but a short 

 time. The male seizes the female about the arms, 

 and dio-s the hands in the axils or above the shoulders 

 under the fold prolonged from the supra-tympanic. 

 The croaking during the pairing season is very loud, 

 produced mostly in the evening and at night, and the 

 males joining in choruses, the rolling crak-crah voice 

 is to be heard miles off. These concerts are continued 

 far into the summer when the weather is bright or 

 on the approach of a thunderstorm, and sometimes 

 even as late as autumn. The female enters the water, 

 where she is awaited by the males, only when ready 

 to spawn, and oviposition is accomplished in a few 

 hours. Deep pools or ponds of clear water, more or 

 less richly endowed with vegetation, sometimes flooded 

 quarries, are selected for the purpose, and in the early 

 part of summer the graceful tadpoles may be seen 

 swimming about like fish in every direction, very 

 unlike most others, which keep more to the bottom 

 and only rise now and then to fetch air at the surface, 

 or lazily lie basking in the sun in the shallow parts. 



Metamorphosis takes place at the end of July or 

 beoinninof of Aumist, when swarms of baby tree-frogs 

 may be found hidden in the grass near their birth- 

 place, whence they emerge after a heavy ram in such 

 numbers as to produce the delusion of showers of 

 frogs ; a delusion which is much increased by the fact 

 that they sometimes climb up the clothes of passers by, 

 who fancy they have come down on them with the 

 rain. 



A case of hibernation in the larval state has been 

 recorded bv Lessona. 



