1 66 WILD LIFE AT HOME. 



recovered, but I regret to say the cat ultimately 

 succeeded in killing him. ' 



I have measured an adult frog's leap on level 

 ground and found it to be twenty-three inches in 

 length, but it is said to be capable of much more. 



Frogs love a hole filled with peat-moss water 

 better than any other kind of situation to breed in, 

 and I have seen quite a large place of this kind 

 literally black with tadpoles during the month of 

 June. Here, earlier in the spring, their weird croak- 

 ing may be heard to perfection. I have many, 

 many times sat on a boulder, away up on a lonely 

 Yorkshire moor, far from any human haunts or 

 sound, and listened to an almost unbroken chorus 

 coming from a brown slime-covered pool close 

 by until the whole place began to feel eerie and 

 uncanny. 



Some people are incapable of distinguishing frog 

 music from that of a turtle dove. I was sitting on a 

 roadside rail one summer's evening watching a water 

 vole in a pond not far from Elstree, when three London 

 cyclists rode by. One of them heard a turtle dove 

 calling in a hedge close at hand, and called out, " Bill, 

 do you hear that frog a-croakin' ? " His friend was 

 in the act of expressing some measure of surprise 

 when his wheels carried him out of earshot. 



Toads are not nearly so common as frogs, and 

 although somewhat similar in size and appearance, 

 they may be easily distinguished from the latter by 

 their warty skins, and their crawling method of 



