n8 



THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



to the able and energetic secretary of some learned society, 

 for a common frog which can climb to the top of a door 

 ought to have an essay written on it. If it had, then it 

 was only a tree-frog, a species which was rather a favourite 



with me until one evening 

 last year. There were sev- 

 eral of them about my 

 house, and their gymnas- 

 tics won my admiration. 

 From a yard away they 

 would fling themselves at 

 a bedpost or a window- 

 pane, and stick like a dab 

 of mud, by virtue of those 

 suckers on their toes. 

 They would perch pleas- 

 antly on the edge of the 

 water cooja or on the rim of 

 a tumbler. They seemed 

 to gain little by all their performances, for their aspect was 

 always famine-stricken and angular, and their colour, with- 

 out being anything very definable, suggested the sere 

 and yellow leaf. They slept all day, sticking like postage 



A QUONDAM FAVOURITE. 



