10' NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



cleaning the contents. Most of the specimens were obtained for 

 me bj my friend I)r O. S. Westcott of Chicago, who was visiting 

 the station at that time. I suggested that he test the efficiency 

 of a hook and line baited with a little piece of red silk flirted near 

 the bullfrogs' heads. He reported the capture of every specimen 

 properly approached; said that bullfrogs are abject idiots; said 

 that if one is not hooked at his first dash for the dangling cloth, 

 but gets his mouth snagged, he will go for the bait again and 

 again as eagerly as at first. It is indeed remarkable how the 

 predatory reflexes incited by the sight of the dangling red cloth 

 prevail over the effects of the wounds. 



There now remain in the New York State collection the pre- 

 served contents of the stomachs of fifteen of these frogs, and I 

 have studied this material, with the aid of Mr W. H. Ferguson, 

 and report on it here. The following table is largely the work 

 of Mr Ferguson. I have added to it the single record published 

 in bulletin 47 p.401, making 16 in all. 



The traditional account of the manner of the bullfrog's feeding 

 pictures him sitting immobile on a bank, watching for insects 

 passing through the air, and, when these approach, capturing 

 them by flirting out his long, bifurcated, sticky tongue and 

 striking them. The picture is incomplete. Doubtless he cap- 

 tures some of the bees and hover flies and others of the fleetest 

 insects in just this way, but the larger, heavier and slower ones 

 he endeavors to meet half way. For instance, on the approach of 

 a big caddisfly or a blackwing damselfly, he becomes greatly ex- 

 cited^ especially after an unsuccessful stroke at it, and leaps and 

 plunges toward it with tongue and jaws both reaching for it. 

 Some of the larger of his captives would not be held by the 

 adhesiveness of his tongue without the immediate assistance of 

 his jaws. Moreover, the greater part of his food- is not obtained 

 from the air at all, but from plants, from the ground, and from 

 the water, and doubtless, by more deliberate methods. The cater- 

 pillars and sawfly larvae of the table were probably picked from 

 plants; the beetles and millipedes from the ground; the water 

 striders, floating dead insects, soldierfly larvae, gnat pupae, and 

 transforming caddisflies from the surface of the water; and the 

 mayfly nymph, gnat larvae and some of the snails probably from 

 beneath the water. 



