THE BULLFROG 113 



suggests a question whether the siren, the proteus, and 

 the menobranchus may not also be overgrown babies, 

 which have now ceased altogether to assume the form 

 which once was their mature one. Individuals of the 

 commonest English species occasionally preserve some 

 of the external characters of immaturity, in spite of 

 having attained reproductive capability. The Alpine eft 

 also very often breeds before attaining the form wdiich 

 that species normally exhibits. 



The true salamander — a very handsome black and 

 yellow animal — is found from Holland to Spain, Algiers, 

 and Syria. Like the pipa toad, it brings forth its young 

 in the adult condition, they being born without gills. 

 One result of the maturity they attain thus early is that 

 one unborn brother sometimes devours another. Before 

 birth they for a time have gills, and gills of relatively 

 large size. Some curious experiments were tried on the 

 dark Alpine variety of this animal by a Miss Von 

 Chauvin. She took from the oviduct of a mother sala- 

 mander some of its unborn young in that early stage 

 of existence when they have large external gills. These 

 specimens she placed in water, whei-e the first eflect of 

 the disproportionately large size of their gills was that 

 they were cast off. Thereupon, new and much smaller 

 gills appeared in their place, and lasted a long time — 

 fourteen weeks in one instance. 



The curious and noteworthy point in this experiment 

 is the fact that after the original gills (which were 

 unadapted for free external life) had perished, new and 

 suitable gills became developed, and this not in a struggle 

 for existence against rivals, but directly and spontane- 

 ously from the innate nature of the animal. 



The order of efts and the order of frogs include all 

 the familiar forms of batrachian life. The next order 



H 



