
TERRARIA AND AQUA-TERRARIA 
They exhude pun- 
gent acrid secretions 
ae as a method of defense. 
ye They are extremely use- 
868 ful creatures devouring 
st all kinds of insect vermin, 
set snails and worms, their 
#. food being every creep- 
C ing and flying thing 
A small enough to swallow. 
Ya One observer notes that 
| a single toad ate 24 cat- 
erpillars in 10 minutes 
and another 35 ‘celery 
worms in three hours, 
and estimated that a good 
sized toad will destroy 


10,000 insects and worms ina single summer. The illustration of the 
metamorphosis of the common American Hoptoad, Bufo Jentiginosis, 
(Shaw), Fig. 239, is taken from the Nature Study leaflets of the Cornell 
University College of Agriculture and shows the life history of the toad 
and the devastation wrought by its enemies, as of probably 1000 eggs 
and tadpoles but one or two toads survive to the adult stage. 
The toad is common to almost all parts of the United States. It 
rapidly passes through all the stages of development from tadpole to 
maturity, and its usefulness to the agriculturist should afford it better 
protection. A rarer form, the Burrowing Toad or Spade Foot, Sacphiopus 
holbrooki (Har.) is a smaller extremely noisy toad, which burrows in the 
ground. 
In the aquarium toad tadpoles are less beneficial than those of the 
frog as their change to the adult form is briefer. 
Tree Toaps. The most generally distributed tree toads and tree frogs 
are the Common Tree Toad or Tree Squeak, Hy/a versicolor (Le Conte), 
inhabiting the Eastern part of the United States, and having a body 
length of 2 inches; the smaller Pickering’s Tree Frog, Hy/a pickeringu 
(Hol.) about 1 inch in length; the Common or Swamp Tree Frog, 
Chorophilis nigritus (Le Conte); the Savannah Cricket Frog, Aeris gryllus 
(Hol.), the Green Tree Frog, Hy/a arborea (Hol.); and the Changeable or 
Chameleon Tree Frog, Hy/a chameleonis, (Hol.), which possesses the 
capacity of changing its tints to such extent that its color cannot be de- 
finitely described. 
336 
