CHAPTER XVIII 



AMPHIBIANS 

 Salamanders, Frogs, and Toads Found In or Near Water 



Toads forage through city parks and gardens, and frogs 

 raise their spring choruses from every roadside swamp. Any- 

 body who is acquainted with amphibian life knows the heavy 

 wet plash of the bullfrog, the translucent daintiness of the 

 red newt half hidden beneath wet leaves, and the industry of 

 the common toad, collecting insects near the rose bushes at 

 evening, intimate and friendly, yet aloof. 



General form and habits. — Amphibians generally spend 

 their youth in the water, leaving it only to return again. But 

 there are notable exceptions. Red-backed salamanders never 

 go into water even to lay their eggs, while a few others like 

 the mud-puppy and the hellbender do not go out of it. With 

 rare exceptions, our native frogs and toads leave the water 

 but return to it. Like fishes and reptiles, amphibians are 

 cold-blooded, back-boned animals, but amphibians seldom 

 have scales or bony plates while fishes and reptiles are usually 

 covered with them. Almost all breathe by gills during their 

 larval period and later they have lungs or other devices; but 

 all their lives most of them take oxygen through their thin 

 moist skins. The salamanders have tails and are shaped so 

 much like lizards that they are continually mistaken for them, 

 m spite of their soft, scaleless skins. The frogs and the toads 

 are tailless after they have grown beyond the tadpole stage. 



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