74 
almost impossible. The yolks would be good food for fishes 
and newts, but the jelly foils all attempts to swallow them. It also 
serves to keep the eggs a sufficient distance apart for their necessary 
respiration. After a week or more the black yolks, which are 
spherical in shape, begin to lengthen one way, and gradually the 
egg unrolls. Reference to the fourth, fifth, and sixth illustrations 
in this series will make this clear. If the weather be sunny, bubbles 
begin to appear all over the the jelly, and sometimes in such 
numbeis that the mass is buoyed up to the surface by their action. 
When quite unrolled, the young tadpole wriggles its way through 
the jelly to the water and fixes itself to the spawn by means of a 
sucker below the head. Then the jelly begins to break up and 
decompose, turning a greenish colour, and by this time all the tad- 
poles have congregated on its surface. In a few days more they 
leave the jelly and sw'im about, and often in such numbers that the 
pond looks one wriggling mass of black. Their food seems to be 
the juices of aquatic plants and the fine green scum that so often 
collects on the surface of stagnant pools. On this diet they quickly 
develop, until at last two tiny feet can be made out growing from 
the root of the tail. At first the legs are quite straight, but as they 
grow they become folded in that characteristic fiog-like attitude. 
All this time the fore limbs have been developing under the skin just 
behind the jaws, though they are quite invisible unless the creature 
is held up to the light. A few days after the hind pair have fully 
developed the front legs become restless, and after repeated attempts 
to push through the enveloping skin, one leg manages to burst 
out, and some hours later it is followed by the other. The tadpole 
is now able to climb up on the muddy bank of the pond and 
rest out of water for a while. But at the least sign of danger it 
hops back again, often tumbling over in i s efforts to release its 
setni-dried tail, which sticks to everything it touches. In the last 
few days a great change has come over it, for it now has the lungs 
of a frog, and should it be unable to climb upon something above 
the water-line, it would speedily drown in the very element which 
for months has formed its home. The tail begins to wither at the 
tip, till in a few more days the whole of it has been absorbed, The 
creature is no longer a tadpole, and it leaves the water and takes up 
its abode in the wet herbage at the sides of the pond. There it 
feeds on tiny insects such as aphides and ants, and grows rapidly. 
As the frog becomes larger it wanders away from the water. 
During wet weather it may be met with in the daytime, but should 
the season become dry and hot the creature hides under bark and 
stones in moist places, not venturing out to feed before twilight. 
The prey is captured in a very peculiar manner. A frog’s tongue 
is fixed to the floor of the mouth, quite near the front of the lip, and 
when not in use lies back, pointing down the throat As soon as 
the creature spies an insect it quickly crawls within reach, opens its 
jaws almost at right angles and throws the tongue forward t ill it 
touches the prey. As this member is very sticky' the insect adheres 
to it and is drawn back into the mouth If small the prey is 
swallowed after a few gulping actions on the part of the frog, but 
if rather large it is forcibly pushed into the mouth by' the use of the 
fore-legs. These amphibians reach maturity in about three years 
and probably live on several seasons after that. 
Edible Frog. — In some parts of the fen-lands of Norfolk and 
Suffolk this frog may be occasionally met with. Its real home is the 
Continent, where it specially' favours Holland and her numerous 
water-ways. Some considerable time ago, in the early ^o’s, an 
enterprising naturalist named Berney imported some hundreds of 
