Part III.] Pond Fish Culture. 155 



Natural History Notes. 



During the summer of 1911, while the men at the Hatchery 

 were working around one of the ponds, one of them, Mr. John 

 French, saw a large bullfrog spring from the edge of the 

 water and catch a chicken that was two weeks old and partly 

 feathered out. The frog, with the chicken in its mouth, jumped 

 back into the grass and weeds that grew in the edge of the 

 water, where it proceeded to swallow the chicken. Meanwhile 

 the old hen had make a great commotion and put up the best 

 fight she could under the circumstances against the reptile, 

 but it did not avail much. The men who were near by rushed 

 to the scene of action and succeeded in capturing the frog by 

 means of a rake. The poor chicken was all out of sight in the 

 frog's stomach except its head, which had apparently caught 

 in the corner of the frog's mouth. One of the men, Mr. John 

 French, held the frog while his brother Henry squeezed the 

 frog's stomach. Arthur Shaw took the chicken by the head 

 and worked his finger around in the frog's throat to loosen 

 up and dislodge the chicken. The combined efforts of the three 

 men succeeded in getting the chicken out of the frog's stomach. 

 The chicken, wet and covered with slime, made distressed 

 comments in the way of little squawks and peeps when rescued. 

 It was partly dried with a piece of burlap and wrapped up and 

 placed in the sun where it might get dry and warm. It re- 

 vived and was afterwards turned loose with the hen. The old 

 bullfrog, with an empty stomach and a look of disgust and 

 disappointment on his face, was returned to the pond, not how- 

 ever, until a little advice had been administered on the "Fish 

 and Game Laws" and the "closed season on birds." Cases 

 have been reported where bullfrogs caught and swallowed 

 young ducks. 



Last summer, while Mr. 0. C. LeSuer, resident engineer and 

 superintendent of the Hatchery, and myself were doing some 

 repair work on the old Hatchery, we caught a bullfrog that was 

 eighteen inches in length, as large a specimen as we have ever 

 seen.* This animal had such a large stomach that we thought 

 we would kill it and see what the frog had been eating. The 

 stomach contained three large crayfish and four large water 

 beetles. One of the crayfish was alive, and when we returned 

 it to the water, it shot back by quick jerks of its tail, appar- 

 ently none the worse off for its experience in whale frog's 

 belly. 



Last June, 1913, we took a garter snake that was 14.5 

 inches long from the stomach of a bullfrog that was 15.5 inches 

 in length. In July, 1911, we took a bullfrog that was nearly a 

 foot in length from a water snake that was about three feet in 



* Since the above was killed, my son George, who was sent to Pond 

 No. 3 to get six frogs for examination for food habits, brought in one 

 that was 18.5 inches in length. I had instructed the boy to get large 

 frogs with full stomachs, but I was sorry that Jumbo frog was killed. 



