CAREFUL MOTHERS 



We now saw why they had left their secure habitation. The Hammer- 

 frogs were constructing their nurseries ! In the large muddy pool 

 in which they sat they had built circular walls, about a foot in 

 diameter and high enough to rise out of the water. These walls 

 were built by the female frog, who brought the mud required in 

 her fingers, piled it up, and smoothed the interior most carefully 

 with hands, belly and throat, in doing all of which she had to bear 

 the weight of the male, who sat upon her back, in order to fertilize 

 the eggs as soon as these were laid in the crater-like structure. In 

 such fortresses the little frogs wake to life ; they are at first, of course, 

 long-tailed tadpoles; then their legs develop, while their tails are 

 absorbed. This nursery fortress protects them from enemies of the 

 piscine race, and alterations of the level of the surrounding water 

 leave them unaffected. 



We went on. A grd^ grd greeted our ears, like the voice of the 

 German Tree-frog, and already Joaquim had caught the green 

 singer among the reeds. He resembled our Tree-frog, but was larger 

 and bonnier. Now we heard a delicate srip, srip, srip from the reeds, 

 as though a chicken had strayed thither. This was the voice of the 

 tiny Pigmy Frog, and he too was soon detected by Joaquim's sharp 

 eyes. We caught also a large brown "Eyed Whistler," whose voice 

 is like the chuckle of rising air-bubbles ; and at the end of our rounds, 

 by the edge of the road, where the water had overflowed the gutter 

 and wetted the stones of the causeway, we found a pretty little 

 Slender Tree-frog, whose brown body bore spots of sealing-wax 

 red on the loins. It uttered a long, complaining, or rather mewing 

 oak! and we found its eggs, imbedded in foam, which surrounded 

 the clutch like the dough of a doughnut. 



Like the Slender Tree-frog, the "Eyed Whistler," which owes 

 that singular name to the fact that it has black eye-Uke spots on 

 its body, and belongs to the Whistling Frogs, buries its eggs in a 

 foam-like mass ; and so does the Whistling Frog described in the 

 previous chapter. Most of these frogs dig holes in the dry ground, 

 into which they eject the eggs and their foamy covering. The 

 advantages of such a method are obvious. On land there are no 

 predatory fish and aquatic insects, and under their coating of foam 

 even terrestrial animals do not recognize the eggs as being edible ; 

 moreover, the coating protects them from desiccation. As a rule the 

 eggs are produced shortly before the beginning of the rainy season, 

 and are so timed that soon after they are laid the water of the 

 neighbouring pond rises, inundates the land, and washes away the 



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