Repliks. 2305 



European tree frog {Hyla arborea), kindly supplied to me from Germany (Berlin) by 

 Mr. W. Pamplin, into a swampy willow thicket of considerable size, in this island, 

 having a reedy pond in the centre, with a clear ditch and water meadows on one side, 

 and overhung on the other by a steep wooded bank and dry copse, — thus giving the 

 colonists choice of sun, shade, water and covert, as their nature may require in turn. 

 I have great hope of their becoming naturalized here, provided the snakes do not mo- 

 lest them; for of the birds I have not much fear, the cover being so thick. — W. A; 

 Bromfield, M.D., F.L.S. ; Eastmount, Ryde, Isle of Wight, October 6, 1848. 



[On both these reptiles I have a few words to say ; and first, as regards the natter- 

 jack. I have paid great attention to these interesting animals ever since the year 

 1826, when I first observed them on Blackheath. In 1841 I brought some from that 

 locality to my little garden at Peckham, where they soon established themselves in 

 subterranean galleries, which they have occupied ever since: every night they make 

 predacious excursions, and are very frequently detected wending their way home some 

 hours after daylight, when they are very apt to be picked up and handled by the chil- 

 dren, into whom no wholesome fear of fire- and poison-spitting on the part of frogs 

 and toads has ever been instilled : it is certainly an unwonted sight to see a little boy 

 of two years of age taking up a huge toad or a natterjack, and fondling him as a very 

 nice playfellow. Believing that nothing was previously known of the breeding of the 

 natterjack, I have obtained the tadpoles in a very young state, and have watched their 

 various transformations, making drawings of them in every stage until they finally 

 leave the water and disperse themselves over the land. Frogs, toads and natterjacks 

 remain on the margins of the pool where they were hatched for some days after ac- 

 quiring their new apparatus for breathing, but they instinctively hurry back to the 

 water for protection if alarmed ; but when a soaking shower has fallen, and the earth 

 has become saturated with wet, they disperse in all directions, wandering far and wide 

 from their birth-place, regardless of the most manifest danger or the most obvious ob- 

 structions : on these occasions they may be seen everywhere crossing roads and path- 

 ways, and hence the never-to-be-eradicated belief that they have fallen from the clouds. 

 I think the month of July is the general one for the grand dispersion of the frogs, — a 

 shower at the end of July fixing the great days with the toads; but I have never yet 

 seeu the natterjack on the move until the 15th of September, and this year they have 

 been unusually late: I have natterjack tadpoles still unchanged on the 12th of Octo- 

 ber. I purpose publishing a series of records, with dates, dimensions and figures, 

 when my observations shall be complete. Like Dr. Bromfield, I am indebted to Mr. 

 Pamplin for specimens of the tree frog ; but instead of liberating, I have kept them 

 in confinement, with a view of observing their " manners and customs : " they are most 

 interesting and beautiful creatures, and seem well reconciled to their fate ; in fact they 

 perch on a window-sill, and employ themselves in leaping at and devouring the flies 

 that come within reach, in such a free and easy manner as to give one quite the idea 

 that they consider themselves at home. I hope Dr. Bromfield will record from time to 

 time, in the ' Zoologist,' the results of the interesting experiment he has tried of na- 

 turalizing this frog in the Isle of Wight. — Edward Newman.'] 



Reptiles swallowing their Young, — My attention has been called to a paragraph in 

 the last number (Zool. 2268), relative to the question as to whether reptiles swallow 

 their young when threatened with coming danger. When in Scotland, last autumn, 

 I saw what at the time satisfied me that vipers really possessed this faculty, though 

 the evidence was scarcely as conclusive as might be wished. Walking along a sunny 



