MADAME MERIAN'S STATEMENTS 



The Surinam toad has not this light-hearted habit of 

 deserting its offspring, and leaving them to the chances 

 of wind and weather. The eggs when produced are 

 piously spread over the body of the female frog by the 

 male, and they are there received into pits which gradu- 

 ally deepen, and are even furnished with a lid, the origin 

 of which is rather uncertain. In these cradles the eggs 

 become tadpoles, and the tadpoles in due course frogs, 

 and after a time they desert the maternal back for a 

 roving life in the surrounding waters of their pool. 

 This paternal and maternal care of the young is known 

 to exist in other frogs ; and such domesticity is not what 

 might be expected from the cold-blooded and small- 

 brained amphibian. But the formation of separate 

 pits in the skin is a feature peculiar to Pipa. In other 

 frogs there are pouches of various kinds developed. 

 Since the young frogs are so carefully looked after 

 during their youth, it is perhaps rather remarkable 

 that they go through a tadpole stage outside the egg at 

 all. For in analogous cases the eggs become frogs at 

 once. Whether these tadpoles ever go for a swim on 

 their own account is uncertain, as are many details 

 concerning the domestic economy of Pipa. These sin- 

 gular habits were originally and partly related by 

 Madame Merian, whose statements upon South 

 American natural history were received with an in- 

 credulity which subsequent investigations show them 

 not to have deserved. It was this same lady who told 

 of vast bird-eating spiders and of many " curiosities of 

 natural history," which actually occur or exist. This 

 Pipa displayed its breeding habits at the Zoo some few 

 years back. But whether it was that the mother was 

 disquieted by the crowds that vulgarly stared in upon 

 her domestic privacy, or that the water was deeper than 

 was suitable to the proper aeration of the tadpoles in their 

 nursery, they all failed to develop except a single tad- 



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