BACTRACHIANS AS PETS 
189 
birch, the last not the least of the ornaments of the forest. We 
cannot expect to have the old woods keeping the same outline 
for ever, and always to be the exact same bit of forest, as if 
carved in stone, instead of being creatures instinct with life and 
subject to the incidents which belong to life. 
But there will always be the representatives of ages past, if 
man will allow Nature to do her OAvn work in her own way and 
in her own time. Hurry is the mark of our times, and Nature 
is too steady and slow for our scientific foresters, who, besides 
making the enclosures what they are, seem to think that 
planting trees here and there in the open, eight or ten feet high, 
is a more speedy way of getting effect than caring for Nature’s 
seedlings. So every year the scythe is used to cut fern where- 
ever any grows in or near the old woods, and those who may 
be in the forest in September or October can with their own 
eyes see thousands of young trees in the butts of the fern 
swathes, which are carried away from the forest for litter. 
This is flo work of the Commoners : they have no right to 
fern, unless they purchase it of the Crown, and all that is 
required is an order from those in forest authority to stop this 
wasteful process. Large quantities of fern are available for 
sale by the Crown, which can be cut without serious damage to 
rising timber ; but no such destruction should be allowed in or 
near the old woods. I hope that you will be able to find room 
for this paper. It may induce some lovers of Nature to come 
to the forest and make notes of Nature, and to furnish valuable 
contributions to Nature Notes. 
May, 1899. A Selbornian. 
BATRACHIANS AS PETS. 
HE great number of notes on frogs and toads appearing 
regularly in Nature Notes has caused me to think 
that the following methods of keeping reptiles and 
batrachians in captivity, being the outcome of several 
years’ experience, will be of general interest. All the animals 
here considered are easily obtained, and may either be captured 
by searching in suitable situations, or purchased for a trifle at the 
shops of dealers in gold fish and aquarium requisites. They all 
live on the animal food to be found in every garden, such as 
earthworms, slugs, and beetles, which must be given to them 
alive. In cold weather they will remain torpid for days together, 
requiring no food at all. I need hardly add they are all 
absolutely harmless. They will well repay the student who 
directs his attention towards them, as he need only provide the 
simple food already mentioned, with a dish of water to bathe 
in, a little gravel to crawl about on, and a broken flower-pot 
as a shelter from sun and rain. Moreover, if kept out of doors, 
as I shall describe, their habits can be studied as readily as if 
they were free. 
