Scaphiopus holbrookii 95 



being much thicker as if more eggs had been emitted at such periods. When 

 first laid, they had a brownish appearance with conspicuous creamy-white 

 vegetative pole. As the jelly swelled and the eggs all turned right side up, 

 they looked very black. 



"By the next morning, some eggs were almost ready to hatch (these must 

 have been the ones we found when we first found the pond). The other clusters 

 were swollen into loose, irregular, elongate bunches attached to the stems 

 which were tipped so that many times the bunches lay lengthwise on the water. 

 There seemed to be a tendency for the bunches of eggs to be more or less 

 clustered in areas. We noticed many pairs close together that first afternoon, 

 and unattached males trying to get at a female making tangled masses of 

 toads. There was a strong chorus that night and by the next morning the 

 pond was all churned up and muddy. Many, many eggs were there, but no 

 toads. The story was told for the season." 



EGGS 



Attachment, egg mass, egg description. On May 4, 1863 Mr. F. W. Putnam 

 (1863, p. 229) made some statements concerning the frogs and toads found 

 about Cambridge, Mass. 



"The Scaphiopus solitarius Holbrook appeared in their old place, near the 

 Botanical Gardens, in large numbers on the 19th of April, and commenced 

 the same day to lay their eggs in bunches of about one, two and three inches 

 in diameter; these bunches were floating on the water and were not attached 

 to the grass, as was the case when seen in the previous years. On the 29th 

 of April, another set of Scaphiopus visited the place, and laid eggs, which 

 were attached to the grass as formerly. The tadpoles of this species are 

 hatched in about six days." 



Pike (1886, pp. 218, 219) compares these eggs and toads eggs. "On the 

 ridge extending from East New York to Jamaica, one of the most elevated 

 parts of Long Island, there are ten or twelve ponds, some fed by springs and 

 constant, others often filled by winter's snows and rains. This spring I 

 worked them all over with my net, and though I heard no screeching, yet as 

 the Scaphiopus is far from rare on the hills near by, I felt sure they must 

 breed in some of these ponds. Toads, I know, also swarm in the vicinity, and 

 on the 17th of July I fished up what I took to be toad spawn, although not in 

 chaplets, and only slightly attached to some weeds floating about in the 

 water. The eggs were evidently laid only a few days before." 



In 1897 Wm. L. Sherwood (1898, p. 18) holds that "The eggs are laid any 

 time from April to June in bunches from one to three inches in diameter, and 

 are placed around a spike of grass." 



In 1899 G. A. Boulenger speaks of their eggs and breeding thus: "I had 

 appHed last summer to Messrs. Brimley, in North Carolina, where the Spade- 

 foot is abundant, who kindly informed me that the eggs are laid early in 

 spring, in strings resembling those of toads, but thicker and with the vitelline 

 spheres more irregularly disposed — in fact, as I infer, not unlike those of 

 Pelobates. They added that the season was then too far advanced for tadpoles 



