THE 
AMERICAN: NATURALIST. 
VOL. XXI APRIL, 1887. No. 4. 
ON OVIPOSITION AND NURSING IN THE BA- 
TRACHIAN GENUS DENDROBATES. 
BY HERBERT H. SMITH. P 
a T while at Santarem, on the Lower Amazon, my atten- 
tion was called to a brown frog which was very common in 
the damp forests of the highland, hopping about under the trees. 
I frequently saw it several miles from any stream or pool. The 
hunters told me that this frog carried its young on its back. I 
offered a high price to any one who would bring me a specimen 
with its young, but no one took advantage of my offer; and 
€ 
though I was collecting eyery day in the woods where the frog — 
was so common, I never saw the young at all. I finally con- 
cluded that my informants had confounded this species with the 
Surinam toad, which is probably found at Santarem, though I 
never saw it there; so I dismissed the subject from my mind. 
My specimens of the frog were lost, with other batrachians and 
»eptiles, on the voyage to New York, but I hope to determine 
the species with fresh examples at some future time. 
One day in October or November, 1884, I was camping in a 
lonely spot forty miles northeast of Cuyaba, in Western Brazil; 
the place was on the chapadao, or table-land, close to a deep, 
rocky ravine. All around were little tracts of damp meadow, 
such as are frequently seen even on the higher portions of the 
chapadao. Brazilians call such spots varzeas,a name also applied 
to the grass-lands on river-plains, to which these patches have 
only a superficial resemblance. The varzeas of the highland 
VOL. XXI.—NO. 4. 
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