TOAD CROAKING. 429 



of the body is a bright olive, yellowest in the hollow 

 of the back, and greenest about the head. The belly 

 is parchment white. The measure from muzzle to 

 extremity of the vertebrae is five inches and a half. 

 When this Anoura was brought me its throat was 

 still inflated. It was puffed out like that of a pouter 

 pigeon, and immediately on being set down on the 

 floor it recommenced croaking. The sound was very 

 greatly reduced from the reputed bull bellow it sends 

 up from the marshes and meadows. It sounded to 

 me not unlike the partridge call that I have heard 

 country-boys imitate in Lincolnshire. I laid my hand 

 upon it, when it filled its vocal sac, and croaked; and 

 the convulsion, contraction, and jerk of the whole 

 internal parts were as if every organ was pressed up 

 to the back-bone. There were some then in the 

 same meadow croaking to each other, and their voices 

 were said to have been heard at half a league distant. 

 " I was told that some frogs I used to hear croaking 

 at night in the boggy grounds about Port au Prince 

 in Haiti, were not known there till a shower of rain 

 brought them into the Island. The precise period of 

 this occurrence was mentioned to me, and I have a 

 note of it somewhere. If I could be satisfied that 

 what the historian Moreau de St. Mery likened to 

 * tetards ' (bull-heads) were tadpoles, I should say it 

 was the same shower as the one he commemorates, of 

 May, 1786. He mentions these tetard-like animals 

 as exhibiting the same voracious savageness as that 

 recorded by Professor Bill of the Tadpole. ' They 

 killed and devoured each other.' He records no more 

 than this prevailing ferocity. Had he carried on his 



