The Zoologist — December, 1869. 1933 



absorbs water and increases vastly in bulk ; thus the dark-coloured 

 yelks become widely sejjarated fioni each other, although the mass is 

 still compact and coherent, and has the appearance of colourless 

 transparent jelly dotted with small black beads. After remaining at 

 the bottom a few days the mass rises and floats on the surface ; and 

 when the spawn deposited by a single frog has become thus swollen 

 by the absorption of water, its disproportion to the size of the parent 

 becomes very apparent: it not unfrequently exceeds her bulk at 

 least tenfold, and those who are unacquainted with the water- absorbing 

 process are often heard expressing their wonder that so small a body 

 should have contained such a volume of spawn. When the spawn 

 has risen to the surface of the water, or near it, the frogs of both sexes 

 may be constantly observed riding upon the spawn, their heads alone 

 appearing above the surface of the water, and occasionally bobbing 

 up and down and emitting sonorous croakings that are described as 

 musical, discordant, pleasing, gentle, agreeable or horrible, exactly as 

 they happen to affect the mind of the auditor : so true is it that 

 beauty and ugliness are not inherent qualities of the object thus 

 described, but are conferred by the mind of the describer. These 

 frog gatherings are very familiar to our English boys, and afford them 

 the opportunity of indulging those cruel propensities which seem the 

 attributes of their kind. Our German friends have viewed these love- 

 feasts more philosophically, and many have described them in glowing 

 terms. 



The development of the tadpole from the egg, and of the perfect frog 

 from the tadpole, have engaged the attention of naturalists in all ages; 

 and the very striking correspondence between the metamorphosis of a 

 frog and an insect has repeatedly been made the subject of comment. 

 The state of egg almost exactly corresponds, and the larva of the 

 insect is identical with the tadpole of the frog : from this stage insects 

 vary amongst themselves : the beautiful and gradual transition from 

 the larval to the adult form is precisely alike in the frog and those 

 isoraorphous insects which constitute the families Blattidge,Locustidae, 

 &c., a fact which M. Quatrefages appears to have overlooked, when, in 

 the admirable passage I am about to cite he comments with perfect 

 truth on the absence in the life of the frog of any state " like the 

 apparently torpid condition of the pupa." It is here most manifest 

 that he has been in the habit of regarding all insect metamorphosis 

 as amorphous. 



