INSTITIJTO OSWALDO CRUZ 
CAIXA POSTAL 926 
BRASIL — RIO DE JANEIRO 
Oi- 
_The special stud^ of tiie frogs in the vicinity of the City 
Kio de Oaneiro, as well as those in places in IJinas Geraes 
and Sao Paulo, vms begun about fifteen years ago by Dr.Adolpho 
Lutz, tlie iiiost eminent Brazilian scientist doctor, and pioneer 
in tlie field of the tropical medicine. He has described"^ and 
recorded for the first tine many new kinds of frogs, and has 
devoted his attention to a study of their most interesting 
and x-j^^culiar life histories. He has taken me to quiet ponds 
in which we found the nest of a giant tree-frog ( Hvla faber ), 
a shallow basin of mud built up with mud walls several indies 
high in almost architectui'al regularity near the water's 
edge, euid in viiich the fenmle deposits her long strir^g of 
eggs which are rendered safe from the depredations of egg-eat- 
ing fishes bxA the fortress which she has built around them. 
There we saw her one night, sitting on the edge of her little 
castle-cradle jguafding her eggs, her eyes shining like blank 
jet in the light of our electric tordies* Beside, her, the 
blue waterlilies stood near surface of the xiool into wMch 
the young tadipoles would wriglle as soon as the next rain 
came to wash away the mud v/alls of tie retaining dam, just 
as their parent's instincts had told her would hap lien » Around 
us the glassy dark leaves of banana trees wet vi/ith the rain 
reflected our torchlights with a kind of unearthly luminescence 
ViThile from the small shrubs came the booming, loud cry of the 
males of this same species calling in the dark for their mates. 
There a purely/' terrestrial frog lived,- the large edible species 
LeptodactylTis ocellatus , with its leopard-^ ots of brovm on a 
rjale green skin. Its feet were long and the toes were slender, 
not swollen at the tipjs into the dishes v/hich characterize 
the arboreal tree-frogs, and vdiich enal.)le them to cling to a 
vertical surface, and to leap) and climb among the branches 
of trees and shrubs. 
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I particularly remember a beautiful lagoa nea Lassance 
in Minas Geraes, in which I collected frogs and fishes ten 
days ago, Bvening was just coming on when we arrived at the 
spot, and the v/hite herons were winging their v/ay to their 
roosts fi’om their all-day fishing expedition in the marsh, ihe 
sharp outline of the Serra do Cabral stood out in dark blue 
against the lemon yellow of the evening sky. We dipped our 
nets for fish and tadpoles vdiile the light lasted, and then 
put on our head-lamps and waded in hipboots among the small 
shrubs that grev/ up through the water in the search for a 
frog described by Dr, Lutz as Pseudio bolbodactyla , a very 
slippery frog \Tiiich is enterely aquatic, with webbed toes 
for sv/imming, and queer popping eyes located on top of its head, 
so that it can hang in the water ¥/ith only its eyes and nos- 
trils above the surface, waiting foz* an unwai’y insect to fly 
within range of its sv;ift upward leap. In a couple of hours 
we had caught twenty or so of the wary and active species, ard 
I mai’veled at the beauty of their striking coloration,- a 
soft velvety green on the body, pale yellow below, and tiie 
rind-legs striped with a handsome pattern of chocolate and 
creamcolor, ihe pseudio had a iDeculiar bellowing cry that 
sounded much like those of the long horned zebus , that had 
Typ. do Institute Oswaldo Cm? 
