iv.J THE COMMON FROG. 



39 



arboreal as in tropical America. There alone do we 

 find monkeys with a prehensile tail capable of serving ) 

 as a fifth hand, and so affording greater security and 

 facility to locomotion amidst the branches. Only 

 there also do we find beasts so exclusively constructed 

 to pass the whole of their lives in trees that they can 

 move along the ground only with difficulty — such is 

 the case with the sloths. Porcupines, which in the Old 

 World have short tails, in the New World have lone 

 and prehensile ones. An animal allied to the Badger 

 — the Kinkajou {Cercolcptes caudivolvidiis) — similarly 

 acquires in South America a long and prehensile 

 caudal appendage. Even the Fowl and Peacock Order 

 of Birds becomes in South America more strictly 

 arboreal than elsewhere (being represented by the 

 Curassows) ; and the very geese find there a congener 

 (Palamedea) specially adapted to dwell in trees, and 

 destitute (like the Frog PJiyllomedusa before men- 

 tioned) of a web-like membrane between the toes. 



We have now advanced a further stage in seeking a 

 reply to the question, " What is a Frog t " We have 

 also viewed it in the light to be derived from a con- 

 sideration of the more noteworthy forms of the Frog's 

 order. 



We may next inquire what are its next nearest 

 allies } What other animals of the class Batrachia 

 constitute an order which approaches nearest to the 

 P'rog's order Anoiira f 



Almost every pond in England which harbours 

 frogrs, harbours also those little four-leeeed, lone- 

 tailed, soft-skinned creatures termed Efts or Neiuts 

 (of the genus Triton) familiar to every schoolboy. 



