MY GARDENING. 13 
doubt, are more enthusiastic still. Therefore I do 
not recommend that idea, unless it be supple- 
mented by some effective method of combating a 
grave disadvantage. My own may not commend 
itself to every one. Each spring I entrust some 
casual little boy with a pail ; he brings it back full 
of frog-spawn and receives sixpence. I speculate 
sometimes with complacency how many thou- 
sand of healthy and industrious batrachians I 
have reared and turned out for the benefit of my 
neighbours. Enough perhaps, but certainly no 
more, remain to serve me—that I know because 
the slugs give very little trouble in spite of the 
most favourable circumstances. You can always 
find frogs in my garden by looking for them, but 
of the thousands hatched every year, ninety-nine 
per cent. mustvanish. Do blackbirds and thrushes 
eat young frogs? They are strangely abundant 
with me. But those who cultivate tadpoles must 
look over the breeding-pond from time to time. 
My whole batch was devoured one year by 
“devils”—the larve of Dytiscus marginalis, the 
Plunger beetle. I have benefited, or at least have 
puzzled my neighbours also by introducing to 
them another sort of frog. Three years ago I 
bought twenty-five Hyloe, the pretty green tree 
species, to dwell in my Odontoglossum house and 
