350 Frog a of the Okefinokee Swamp 



oak toad (Bufo quercicus), the six-lined lizard (Cneniidophorus sexlineatus) 

 glass snake (Ophisaurus ventralis), smaller snakes, peculiar insects, cotton 

 mice (Peromyscus gossypinus gossypinus) enter in and out of the burrows, but 

 it is not especially conceivable that they would seriously injure large adult 

 gopher frogs. If the young frogs live also in the burrows they might succumb 

 to some of the forms above. Those who like to think of the pine snake, the 

 gopher snake, the diamondback rattler, the cottontail rabbit, the gray fox, the 

 skunk, the burrowing owl all living in amity together will no doubt point out 

 that the snakes and possibly some of the others feed on warm-blooded prey. 

 Experience proves, however, that the gopher snake may eat glass snakes as 

 well as rats, that the pine snake and diamondback may take cold-bloods 

 occasionally and that the carnivorous mammals would not wholly avoid frogs. 

 The shell of the turtle makes it almost immune from attack. The gopher frog 

 has two defences, one its poisonous secretion and the second its ability to 

 crowd down in the sand of the burrow. The first defence we can hardly be- 

 lieve wholly effective with all snakes and possibly some carnivorous mammals, 

 the second defence is not as strong proportionally in the frog as in the turtle. 

 One wonders if the turtle be in any way a protection or shelter to the frog? 

 One male, 95 mm. in length has no left hind leg except for the thigh. What 

 enemy took the rest? 



In its breeding habitat if it be in an open pond the water snakes prove 

 serious foes at night and in cypress ponds both water snakes and moccasins 

 are searching for all frogs. 



This species has as distinctive an odor as Rana palustris or Ra7ia septen- 

 trionalis or R. virgatipes. The containers in which we have kept gopher frogs 

 may be frothy as we have experienced with R. palustris. We have never tried 

 putting other species of frogs with them to see how the other species would 

 withstand these secretions. 



AUTUMNAL DISAPPEARANCE 



Our own personal acquaintance with it is from July 17-August 9, 192 1, 

 June 14-September I, 1922, when our party encountered it in the Okefinokee 

 region. The type of Cope's Rana areolata aesopus U. S. National Museum 

 (No. 4743) was taken by Dr. Bean Dec. 23, 1886. In the American Museum 

 material is one small specimen (31 mm.) taken "in the grass about 40 yards 

 from a cypress swamp near Arlington, Florida" by Thomas Hallinan on 

 October 28, 1922. This is in the very year of our experience with the same 

 species. 



AFFINITIES 



I believe first that Rana capito LeConte is Rana aesopus Cope and secondly 

 that Rana aesopus thus understood {R. capito and R. aesopus) is closely 

 related to R. spheiiocephala and R. pipiens. 



First, I have long suspected that R. aesopus was R. capito. Two summers' 

 acquaintance with the so-called R. aesopus in a region intermediate between 

 Riceborough, the type locality of R. capito and Florida (range of R. aesopus) 

 confirms this belief. "A few days ago I tried an experiment on my three as- 



