MADAME MERIAN’S STATEMENTS 
The Surinam toad has not this light-hearted habit of 
deserting its offspring, and leaving them to the chances 
of wind and weather. The eggs when produced are 
piously spread over the body of the female frog by the 
male, and they are there received into pits which gradu- 
ally deepen, and are even furnished with a lid, the origin 
of which is rather uncertain. In these cradles the eggs 
become tadpoles, and the tadpoles in due course frogs, 
and after a time they desert the maternal back for a 
roving life in the surrounding waters of their pool. 
This paternal and maternal care of the young is known 
to exist in other frogs ; and such domesticity is not what 
might be expected from the cold-blooded and small- 
brained amphibian. But the formation of separate 
pits in the skin is a feature peculiar to Pipa. In other 
frogs there are pouches of various kinds developed. 
Since the young frogs are so carefully looked after 
during their youth, it is perhaps rather remarkable 
that they go through a tadpole stage outside the egg at 
all. For in analogous cases the eggs become frogs at 
once. Whether these tadpoles ever go for a swim on 
their own account is uncertain, as are many details 
concerning the domestic economy of Pipa. These sin- 
gular habits were originally and partly related by 
Madame Merian, whose statements upon South 
American natural history were received with an in- 
credulity which subsequent investigations show them 
not to have deserved. It was this same lady who told 
of vast bird-eating spiders and of many “ curiosities of 
natural history,’ which actually occur or exist. This 
Pipa displayed its breeding habits at the Zoo some few 
years back. But whether it was that the mother was 
disquieted by the crowds that vulgarly stared in upon 
her domestic privacy, or that the water was deeper than 
was suitable to the proper aeration of the tadpoles in their 
nursery, they all failed to develop except a single tad- 
284 
ee. 
