WAYS OF NATURE 
frogs and toads are all in their hibernaculums in the 
ground. \ 
I saw it stated the other day, in a paper read before 
some scientific body, that the wood frogs retreat two 
feet into the ground beyond the reach of frost. In 
two instances I have found the wood frog in Decem- 
ber with a covering of less than two inches of leaves 
and moss. It had buried itself in the soil and leaf 
mould only to the depth of the thickness of its own 
body, and for covering had only the ordinary coat 
of dry leaves and pine needles to be found in the 
wood. It was evidently counting upon the snow for 
its main protection. In one case I marked the spot, 
and returned there in early spring to see how the 
frog had wintered. I found it all right. Evidently it 
had some charm against the cold, for while the earth 
around and beneath it was yet frozen solid, there 
was no frost in the frog. It was not a brisk frog, but 
it was well, and when I came again on a warm day a 
week later, it had come forth from its retreat and 
was headed for the near-by marsh, where in April, 
with its kith and kin, it helped make the air vocal 
with its love-calls. A friend of mine, one mild day 
late in December, found a wood frog sitting upon the 
snow in the woods. She took it home and put it to 
bed in the soil of one of her flower-pots in the cellar. 
In the spring she found it in good condition, and in 
April carried it back to the woods. The hyla, or little 
piping frog, passes the winter in the ground like 
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