102 Notes on the Frog. [Sess. 
showed the hind limbs until the last one had finished its fore 
ones was about seven weeks. 
After the limbs were fairly formed the creatures seemed to 
stop feeding, the head began to flatten and the mouth to en- 
large. They also began to change colour: from being of a 
uniform greyish black, some turned brown and yellow picked 
out with black, some entirely yellow with black markings, but 
scarcely two of them exactly the same colour. At this time the 
tails also began to vanish. Some of them did so in about 
twenty-four hours, while others took over a week: in fact, 
one of the frogs left the water with a small stump of a tail. 
In from ae to fifteen weeks after they were hatched they 
had all left the water, and were hopping about the greenhouse, 
and would readily swallow a small worm about an inch long, 
although during all the time of their tadpole state I never saw 
any attempt to attack, or in any way interfere with, each 
other. On the contrary, they seemed a happy and contented 
family. 
I did not yet consider it certain that they would not harm 
each other, so next year I got sixteen ova, and reared them in 
much the same way as before, except that I only fed them 
once each week with worms, and each time only the same 
proportion that I had given the first ones every alternate day. 
Yet, with one exception, they all came to perfect frogs in 
about fifteen weeks, as large and as lively as the first ones, 
and never showed the least attempt at cannibalism. Last 
year I again reared some more, this time over thirty, and 
during their lifetime as tadpoles they got no special feeding of 
worms or anything else. Of course there was plenty of vege- 
table growth. It was a much larger dish than before that was 
used, and it stood in the open air all the time. These also 
reached the perfect frog state without any of them being 
devoured, although receiving no special animal food except 
what the water naturally contained in the shape of animal- 
cule, &c., and they arrived at maturity in much the same way 
and time as the others did. This year, if I can manage it, I { 
intend to tempt them in a slight degree to cannibalism by — 
restricting their vegetable diet. : 
Now, after these three years’ experiments and observations, — 
I am perfectly satisfied that tadpoles in their natural state — 
