TOAD CROAKING. 
429 
of the body is a bright olive, yellowest in the hollow 
of the back, and greenest about the head. The belly 
is parchment white. The measure from muzzle to 
extremity of the vertebrae is five inches and a half. 
When this Anoura was brought me its throat was 
still infiated. It was puffed out like that of a pouter 
pigeon, and immediately on being set down on the 
floor it recommenced croaking. The sound was very 
greatly reduced from the reputed bull bellow it sends 
up from the marshes and meadows. It sounded to 
me not unlike the partridge call that I have heard 
country-boys imitate in Lincolnshire. I laid my hand 
upon it, when it filled its vocal sac, and croaked ; and 
the convulsion, contraction, and jerk of the whole 
internal parts were as if every organ was pressed up 
to the back-bone. There were some then in the 
same meadow croaking to each other, and their voices 
were said to have been heard at half a league distant. 
I was told that some frogs I used to hear croaking 
at night in the boggy grounds about Port au Prince 
in Haiti, were not known there till a shower of rain 
brought them into the Island. The precise period of 
this occurrence was mentioned to me, and I have a 
note of it somewhere. If I could be satisfied that 
what the historian Moreau de St. Mery likened to 
‘ tetards ’ (bull-heads) were tadpoles, I should say it 
was the same shower as the one he commemorates, of 
May, 1786. He mentions these tetard-like animals 
as exhibiting the same voracious savageness as that 
recorded by Professor Bill of the Tadpole. ^ They 
killed and devoured each other.’ He records no more 
than this prevailing ferocity. Had he carried on his 
