1893.] NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 57 



the ability to exude an acrid liquid for its defence. It is amusing 

 to note the experience of a dog on his first acquaintance with the 

 creature. If rash enough to seize it in his mouth, the animal will 

 drop it with grotesque expressions of surprise. Perhaps this 

 acrid liquid is a condiment to the cast-off skin, so that what is 

 pungent to Ponto's nose may be piquant to Bufo's tongue. The 

 frog, which is more aquatic, utilizes its skin to aid the lungs in 

 respiration. Thus its cuticle plays an important role in the ab- 

 sorption of oxygen from the water, and perhaps the air, and in 

 the evolution of carbonic acid gas. 



The true frogs and toads are called Anourians, meaning the 

 tailless frogs ; for they dispense with this appendage soon after 

 leaving the larval life. They do not, however, drop it or cast it 

 off, but literally take it in. They begin their adult career as se- 

 vere economists. Sitting on the shore, having for the first time 

 ventured from their watery home, they enter on a veritable new- 

 ness of life. Each now is a lung-breather. His tail, otherwise 

 useless, is his pabulum for the nonce. This appendage is ab- 

 sorbed — that is, taken into the assimilation, literally eaten, as 

 truly as in his coming days his cast-off cuticle will be taken in.' 



But there is another branch of this Batrachian gens — the Uro- 

 delia, the tailed frogs. Such are the efts, the newts, and the sala- 

 manders, which retain their tails through life. Thanks to that 

 little eft, the crimson-?potted Triton, which takes so kindly to the 

 aquarium, the act of exuviation may be often witnessed. This 

 Triton, the Die?nyctiliis vindescens,a.'s, it seems to me, sheds its skin 

 with an irregular periodicity, doubtless due to food and tempera- 

 ture. Living in the water, it is much easier for these creatures 

 to doff their old clothes than for those animals which do it on 

 the land. When the cuticle has become effete, which in the Tri- 

 tons is very thin, a little muscular exertion will cause it to stretch,, 

 and so admit the water between it and the body, when some 

 wriggling movements will cast it off. It will leave the limbs like 

 tiny gloves, the very toes being preserved in form. Thus this 

 filmy thing floats in mid-water, expanded even to the toes. If 

 we could suppose the tiniest efts doing laundry work, we might 

 liken it to a garment on a clothes line and inflated with the wind. 



It must be a canon of Urodelian propriety, for the little Triton 



' See rote at end. 



