The Eastern Wood Frog 



Step forward ever so little, and bend down to pick a spray of 

 red-tipped pyrola flowers, and a frog will leap almost from under 

 your very hand. It is hard work to catch a half-dozen of them, 

 and good fun to make them swim in the near brook. The 

 work comes first, for the ground is uneven and these atoms of 

 frogs leap enormous distances, never twice in the same direction. 

 Besides, they are not easy to keep after they are caught. They 

 are strong and slippery, and they are so delicate that they must 

 be handled with great carefulness. The fun comes when we 

 release them in the water. They are powerful swimmers, and 

 kick out their hind legs vigorously. However, they make for 

 the nearest miniature island, or for the shore, where they are 

 hidden, and we have at once lost all but one or two. It makes 

 us very active indeed to keep trace of these ; before we are aware 

 of it, they, also, are gone. 



However, we saw them long 

 enough to realise that they were 

 slender and delicate in shape, grey 

 or brown in colour, and that they 

 had black or dark-brown cheek- 

 patches. They are one-year-old 

 Wood Frogs. Wood Frogs are 

 more truly land frogs than are 

 any of the others among our 

 North American frogs. 



In addition to these very 

 small frogs, we are certain to come 

 upon larger Wood Frogs, two 

 years old or more. We are most 

 likely to find them along wood 

 paths or at the edge of the brook. 



Land-life, and the broader 

 experience resulting therefrom, 

 seems to have produced a some- 

 what higher development in this 

 frog. It not only looks much 

 more intelligent, but it is certainly 

 less unintelligent in some of the 

 ways of its living, than other frogs. 

 It jumps farther than most of the June. 



207 



The waxy flowers of the pipsissewa. 



