THE TREE FROG. $$ 



through the winter. Before the flies, which were 

 her usual food, had disappeared in autumn, he col- 

 lected for her a great quantity, as winter provision. 

 When he laid any of them before her, she took no 

 notice of them, but the moment he moved them 

 with his breath she sprung upon and ate them. 

 Once, when flies were scarce, the Doctor cut some 

 flesh of a tortoise into small pieces, and moved 

 them by the same means. She seized them, but the 

 instant aferwards rejected them from her tongue. 

 After he had obtained her confidence, she ate, trom 

 his fingers, dead as well as living flies. — Frogs will 

 leap at a moving shadow of any small object ; and 

 both Frogs and Toads will soon become sufficiently 

 familiar to sit on the hand, and be carried from one 

 side of a room to the other, to catch flies as they 

 settle on the wall. — At Gottingen Dr. Townson 

 made them his guards for keeping these troublesome 

 creatures from his desert of fruit, and they acquitted 

 themselves fully to his satisfaction. — He has even 

 seen the small Tree Frogs eat humble bees, but this 

 was never done without some contest : they are in 

 general obliged to reject them, being incommoded 

 by their stings and hairy roughness ; but in each 

 attempt the bee is further covered with the viscid 

 matter from the frog's tongue, and when pretty 

 well coated with this it is easily swallowed * 



A Tree Frog was kept by a surgeon in Germany 

 for nearly eight years. He had it in a glass vessel co- 



Townson's Tracts, 113, 114.. 

 D2 



