502 Embedded Reptiles. By the President. 



ary respiration alone is not sufficient to support life without the 

 help of the cutaneous surface. 



As regards the food supply : — 



The frog lives on animal food, small worms, snails, slugs and 

 insects, to secure and retain which its tongue is beautifully 

 adapted. 



Full grown frogs and toads as we have seen, can support a 

 long abstinence even when not torpid, and require but a small 

 supply of air ; and while those animals with whose habits we are 

 best acquainted take in their principal supplies of liquid by the 

 mouth, frogs and toads take in theirs through the skin alone. 



The mouth of a frog or toad is never opened except for the 

 fraction of a second occupied in capturing its prey with its 

 tongue. For that reason frogs kept in confinement are some- 

 times supposed to have no mouths, or what comes to the same 

 thing, none that they can open. Until I easily proved the con- 

 trary, the mouth of the Scremerston frog was reported to be 

 closed with a membrane. 



It was found by Dr Townson in his experiments on the 

 respiration of the Amphibia, that a frog when placed upon 

 blotting paper, well saturated with water, absorbed nearly its 

 own weight of fluid in an hour and a half. That the moisture 

 thus imbibed is sufficient to enable some of the Amphibia to 

 exist for a long time without any other food, cannot, Dr Townson 

 thinks, be reasonably doubted ; and taken in conjunction with 

 the cutaneous respiration, explains to a great extent the fact that 

 Batrachians live and often thrive under apparently very adverse 

 conditions. 



But for a full grown frog to exist without food for a time, is a 

 very different affair from ours, whom we believe to have grown 

 from the infant into the adult stage, making bone and skin and 

 flesh, which could not have been done without a continuous 

 supply. 



I am not able to suppose that an aqueous solution of food 

 adapted for such a purpose existed, or was available. 



I therefore conclude that nourishment was provided in the 

 form of minute insects brought by the trickling water. 



I have purposely delayed to answer till now, in order that I 

 might with more prominence notice, the pertinent question, 

 having regard to the possible age of the frog, which has often 

 been asked me — *' Is he of the same species as ours, or of any 



