FEOGS. 21 



The author found the southern bullfrog at the breeding season in 

 the swampy tangles of buttonbushes and white alders, where the 

 water was waist deep and the bushes 8 to 12 feet high. In southern 

 Alabama he recorded croaking males as not uncommon in over- 

 flowed areas and swamps (PL IX, fig. 2) of clear streams, especially 

 if overgrown with a thick mat of cat briars (smilax) and arrow 

 arums. In the main their croakings consist of four or five notes 

 and are wholly unlike the call of the northern bullfrog. To some 

 people there is something of the human voice in their call; to others 

 it sounds like an alligator. If the ventriloquial males be in tangles 

 they are hard to discover. These croaking males may also occur 

 along the deep-wooded, overflowed banks of southern rivers. The 

 males have the eardrums enlarged (see gi^een frog, PI. XI, fig. 1) 

 and the first finger swollen. (See bullfrog, PI. XII, fig. 4.) 



Possible Species. — ^At all seasons, except the breeding time, the 

 wood frog is silent and retiring. In water at the spring congress they 

 are difficult of approach. ATt ordinary approach the best one can 

 hope for is only a series of surface ripples. Such assemblies may not 

 last more than a day or so each year. Anywhere from 50 to 200 males 

 have thus been observed floating at the surface. The scene resembles 

 a small toad assembly, in which there is the same scrabbling and zeal 

 of mating. They disappear simultaneously on seeing anyone, and 

 on going tlu-ough the pond a minute later one would wonder where the 

 200 males could be, to say nothing of the females. At the approach 

 of the breeding season the males have the thumb much swollen and 

 the webbing in the hind feet with margin convex, not concave, as in 

 the females at all seasons and in males at other seasons of the year (PL 

 XII, figs. 1 and 2). The period of mating has begun in some years 

 as early as the middle of March and may rarely extend to May 1. 

 The species is customarily at the height of sexual ardor the last week 

 of March or the first week in April. They mate to some extent by 

 day, but more frequently during the night. 



In the common toad the males are noticeably smaller than the 

 females, have dark throats, and at the breeding season possess dark- 

 brown excrescences on the inner upper side of the first two fingers 

 (rarely on the inner edge of third finger) and on the inner carpal 

 tubercle. Both sexes repair to the water about the same time. 

 The migrations begin early in April, but the toads have been recorded 

 migrating to breeding localities as late as June 14, by which date 

 many of the early breeders are leaving or have left the ponds. 



The males far outnumber the females, and the furious actions 

 incident to the first meetings of the two sexes, or following the ar- 

 rivals of other toads, are long sustained and exhausting. The male 

 embraces the female by digging its forearms into the axilla of the 

 female, the fore fingers of the male being folded up. (See tree toad, 

 PL XI, fig. 3). In this way it is clearly seen how the dorsal horny 

 excrescences of the first three fingers of the male come into use. 



In the west and southwest six species of toads may continue to 

 breed as late as July or August, dependent on the rains, and in each 

 species the male has the same kind of excrescences on the fingers and 

 the same form of embrace as already described for the common toad. 

 Because of their greater size two of these six might be of more com- 

 mercial importance than our conunon toad. They are Bufo wood- 

 Jiousii and B. alvarius. 



