SUPPLEMENTABT Is^OTES, BY THE EDITOE. 409 



after some days ; and when I did examine it, the nut was gone, but I ara 

 unable to say whether it was removed by the bird or not. I could not be 

 mistaken in the accuracy of my observations of the process of this hiding, 

 because I was sitting close to the window, watching the bird uninter- 

 ruptedly, within two yards of it when he buried the nut. — R. C. Norman. 



Frogs, imge 70. 



Frogs are said not to croak unless under circumstances when it would 

 appear that they croaked from motives of pleasui'e ; but experience 

 seems to negative this notion. I lived in a house in the country, which 

 was surrounded by a deep area; and every spring, when the frogs began 

 to wake up and move towards water (which they may then be observed 

 to do instinctively), the bottom of the area was constantly covered with 

 frogs (and a few toads), that would seem to have encountered the area 

 in their passage. Their numbers were so great, and the area so deep 

 and difficult of ingress and egress, that the daily removal of them, on the 

 score of humanity, became at length too serious a task, and a man was 

 sent down at intervals to collect them, which he did by sweeping them 

 bodily into a corner, and then shovelling them, pell-mell, into a basket. 

 Those who are inured to physical hardships, become hardy ; a hardy 

 body is comparatively insensible, and an insensible body will naturally 

 have a congenial mind. The frogs were then thi'own over the garden- 

 wall into some rough ground, where there was a pond, towards which 

 they were no doubt proceeding in such numbers when they fell into 

 my area. I often heard these frogs croak when imprisoned in the 

 area, and observed that many of them looked miserably thin, weak, 

 and dry. On one occasion, when I had collected a basket-full — in the 

 first days of this plague of frogs — and was throwing them, one by one, 

 over the wall, a half-starved wretch erected himself at the bottom of the 

 basket, and, like a ghastly phantom, ci'oaked horribly at me, as if in 

 reproach. In croaking, his throat was distended in a line down the 

 middle of it, like that of a bird when he sings. That frogs are enabled 

 to know when water is near, and that they are instinctively attracted 

 towards it, I have had abundant means of certifying in localities where 

 there was a pond on the other side of a paling or a wall. I have found 

 frogs during the spawning season in numbers close against the impeding 

 fence, with their heads towards it ; and when I threw them over, they 

 immediately proceeded in the direction of the water. On one occasion 

 I watched them as they approached the edge of the pond, and was highly 

 amused to see the vigour of the final somerset they took from the bank, 

 and h(nv they stretched their limbs on the soft watery couch, and seemed 

 lo rejoice in the accomplishment of their arduous pilgrimage. — R. C. N. 



Toads — Bee-catching, x>^ge 70. 



I have seen an old toad come forth in the evening, and place himself 

 in front of a bee-stand, where he would watch until a weary bee, heavily 

 laden, missed his footing on the board above, and fell upon the gromidj 



