A CAUTION TOADS AND FROGS. 59 



glad that you have asked that question, I shall help you to 

 find the answer if I can." 



A Caution. — The following study of the toad and frog is 

 not given for either information or servile imitation, but for 

 suggestion and as a sample expression, save for the reduced 

 number of drawings, of another's Nature Study lesson on the 

 subject. It is quite the right attitude on your part, Teacher, 

 to assume that it may contain mistakes, and hence that you 

 will accept no statement in it as final until you have verified 

 it by your own observation and experiment. Thus viewing it, 

 the chapter may be as useful to you, although it is hardly 

 conceivable that it could be to even the brightest of your 

 pupils, as if it had consisted of a category of questions without 

 answers. In one of the books, justly recommended, on page 

 24, it is stated in effect that frogs have teeth in their lower 

 jaw. While I hope that there is no statement in the following 

 description so far astray, yet I am conscious that my observa- 

 tion and memory are fallible. So, for the purpose of Nature 

 Study teaching, spare no pains to verify the statements found 

 in this or any other book of its kind before you use them 

 in the class. 



Toads and FrogS. — Amphibians or batrachians, including 

 mud-puppies, salamanders, newts, toads, tree-toads, and frogs, 

 after leaving the egg, pass through a metamorphosis almost as 

 well marked and as wonderful as that of the higher insects. 

 The stage of all these classes of animals corresponding to the 

 larval one of insects is called the tadpole, which, like the fish, 

 is adapted to life in the water ; the mature form has sacular 

 lungs adapted to life in the air. Salamanders and newts are 

 by many people supposed to be lizards; but true lizards, which 

 in Southern Ontario are occasionally seen and known as swifts, 

 have scales on their body and do not pass through a tadpole 

 stage. 



