304 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 



cles in its tail can be plainly seen. It has a circular 

 mouth, which can feed on either animal or vegetable 

 matter. Its abdomen is large, and fitted for digesting 

 vegetables. It rivals the ant in cleaning the flesh from 

 delicate skeletons for the zoologist. 



In thio state it passes its first summer and goes into 

 the mud in winter, and comes out hungry in early 

 spring. Like all larvae, it is a greedy feeder, and soon 

 begins to show its growth and development by budding 

 a pair of hindlegs, which are completed about the time 

 the forelegs begin to show and the ears to develop.* 

 When these legs are fully developed the tail begins to 

 absorb, and the frog has already begun to take oxygen 

 from the air occasionally; it is changing from a gill- 

 breathing fish to a lung-breathing animal. Think what 

 this means : Lungs are growing and gills are being 

 absorbed, yet in the intermediate state the animal can 

 breathe with both organs. The absorption of the tail 

 goes to nourish some part of the body, but the adoles- 

 cent bullfrog is now smaller than the tadpole from 

 which it changed. 



Not only this, but its long, convoluted intestine, fit- 

 ted to digest vegetation, has somehow changed to a 

 shorter one, for the vegetarian requires a complex 

 apparatus to digest its food, while the similar organs in 

 the carnivora are simple, flesh being easier of digestion 

 than vegetables. 



MARKETING THE FROG. 



Tons of frogs now come to New York markets each 

 year. They are from Canada, Michigan and from the 



* The ears of a frog are those large disks back of the eye ; 

 they are external ear-drums without a meatus. 



