.j/ 
Collecting Frogs in Brazil 
”Ui: or about January 4, 1935, you are instructed to proceed from V/ashington, 
V 
D*G* to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the purpose of collecting specimens for the 
United Btates National hiuseum. ” 
This was the official dictum that opened for nB the way to a royal adventuiej 
With but one short month in which to prepare my equipment, I was to set off alone 
on iny first frog-catching expedition to a foreign country# It is true that I 
had the promise of assistance from ray Brazilian friends at the other end, but it 
was with a whirling head that I began to list the necessary suxplies, — rubber 
boots, miner’s lieadlarnp, mosquito ”dope^% boxes of every size and 
shape, and the thousand and one other items which are essential to even the 
smallest of natural history collecting enterprises* hrid ray object was to 
bring back as large a slice of the fauna and flora of southeastern Brazil as I 
could pack in my big copper tanks filled with innumerable little glass bottles# 
Tne inevitable sailing date arrived, and at last the turmoil of packing 
x*/as at an end, and my boat was steaming away from the pier on an icy January 
afternoon. away, -I -watched the gulls'' 
which twinkled - li ke' silver seciulhs' on- bosom of the North^ River 
a'nd^'wondo're-d when- d- should see . '■ them - again # 
I had started for Brazil upon the invitation of Dr. ii.d)(olpho Lutz, Brazil’s 
Y' I loost eroinent pioneer in research, not only of tropical medicine, but of 
forms of tropical biology. His failing eyesight end advanced age had made 
it impossible for him to complete his mono<^r£ph on Brazilian frogs, and it was 
V 
to collaborate with him upon this book, as ?/ell as to observe and record at 
first Land sorrje of tir-- remarkable and varied aspects of anphibian life in the 
A 
tropics that I had accepted his invitation. 
The very day of my arrival in Hio de Janeiro, I accompanied him to his 
v/ laboratory in the Ii stituto ()•-■ ■' ^ ^ 4 . • 
X (T a imorish buildina of startling 
