THE SURINAM TOAD 
365 
encysted, and retained in a cell of its own 1 . 
There they remain until they are fully incubated, 
the tadpole stage is passed, and a tiny, but per- 
fect Toad emerges from the skin of its mother’s 
back ! 
The number of young usually produced at one 
hatching is from sixty to seventy, and the period 
of incubation is from seventy-five to eighty-five 
days. At the close of this process, the thickened 
layer of skin on the back of the female loses its 
vitality, and is shed very much as a snake sheds 
a dead epidermis. Although the front feet of 
the Surinam Toad are small and webless, the 
hind feet are of great size, fully webbed, and so 
much drawn in at the ends of the toes that in 
swimming the foot is saucer-shaped. 
There are other frogs which display remark- 
able intelligence in the production of their young, 
their methods going far beyond what one would 
expect in creatures as low in the vertebrate scale 
as the amphibians. As a whole, the members of 
this Order offer a wide field for the specialist. 
J For a full description of the process, see the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1896, 
d. 595. 
