CHAPTER XXXIII. 



SHORT STUDIES OF BATKACHIANS. 



IT is with, some hesitation that I venture to utilize 

 the few notes that I have made upon the habits of the 

 many batrachians common to central New Jersey. So 

 promising a field is here offered, that I feel ashamed at 

 not having long since availed myself of the opportunity 

 of studying this class of animals, in spite of the difficulty 

 which is often experienced of observing them to advan- 

 tage when in their chosen haunts. A salamander, for 

 instance, will remain absolutely motionless for an hour 

 on or under some dead leaf, in the trickling waters that 

 wend their way riverward from a mossy spring. To sit 

 or stand for an hour, and watch this immovable creature, 

 is both painful and monotonous, and when, at last, you 

 disturb it, perhaps accidentally, away it goes to some 

 similar spot near by, and resumes its motionless attitude. 

 To spend more time, perhaps plagued the while with 

 suspicions of possible rheumatism, and serenaded by mos- 

 quitoes, is scarcely practicable, and studies of salamander 

 life soon become a bore. That their whole time is not 

 spent in lying still, or in creeping in the mud, is the one 

 fact about which I am certain; and however discour- 

 aging this result may be, it is possible that some future 

 observer may have better luck. 



The toads and frogs are more easily observed, and 

 their habits have been so closely studied that there are 



