LESSON XXXII.
THE FROG’S COUSIN.
“Sweet are the uses of adversity,Which like a toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
“Sweet are the uses of adversity,Which like a toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
“Sweet are the uses of adversity,Which like a toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like a toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
—As You Like It.
Belonging to the same class of vertebrates as the frog, to the same order also, but to a different sub-order, are the toads, the cousins of the frogs. As the frog is well known about the ponds, so the toad is a constant inhabitant of our groves and gardens. We introduce the frog to an admiring public as Mr. Rana, the toad as Mr. Bufo. The order to which the frogs and toads belong is divided according to the structure of the base of the skull and the shape of the shoulder girdle. In general anatomy the frogs and toads are alike. The eggs and young are closely similar, and the stages of growth from egg to the adult form are nearly identical.When the adult form is reached the frogs and toads are yet very tiny creatures, but small as they are the most casual observer can distinguish them from each other by the shape of the snout, and by the far larger development of the hind-legs of the frog.
The chief differences to be noted between Mr. Rana and his cousin, Mr. Bufo, are these: the toad has no teeth, but the frog, as we have seen, has teeth on the upper jaw and palate. The attachment of the tongue is the same, but the free end of the frog’s tongue is forked, and the toad’s is not. The toad’s skin is usually warty, the frog’s is smooth; the toad has a rounder body, shorter hind-legs, and its feet are less fully webbed; its snout is more rounded than that of the frog.
We find, let us say, a toad and a frog in our morning ramble. We notice the soft, moist skin and say, “These are amphibians.” We see that they are tailless, and we say they are anurans, or tailless amphibians. Then having placed them together thus far, we note their differences, and we say of the frog, “This belongs to the Ranidæ,” and of the smaller cousin, “Here is one of the Bufonidæ.” Of the two, we may find the toad the more interesting animal, as among its kinsfolk are some very remarkable families.
Mr. Bufo is a citizen of the world, except of the severely cold polar regions. He hops through the tropics and the temperate zones, and goes pretty well up into the polar regions; an inoffensive, gentle, humble, useful, and generally utterly silent creature. No person is faultless, and Bufo is not superior to humans in that no evil may be laid to his charge.He does eat bees. Happy is Mr. Bufo when, brigand-like, he can stand by the highway of the bees returning laden with wealth of honey and entering their waxen city. He holds his captives for no ransom, he scarcely stays to kill them, but swallows them alive and whole, and digests them later.
As far as we know, this bee-eating is Bufo’s one fault; to counterbalance it he devours millions of harmful insects, and so assuredly saves the world thousands of bushels of fruit and vegetables. We will not say that Bufo is greedy in eating. It is true that he swallows insects ceaselessly and swiftly, so much so that a grasshopper’s legs, or some other creature’s antennæ, may sometimes be seen sticking out of a toad’s mouth, while the carcass is well down his throat—but we will not be hard on him; we call this—zealous attention to business. The French gardeners appreciate Bufo’s usefulness, and he is brought alive to market to be sold to those who need his help in their gardens.
Bufo can be tamed and taught to eat from your hand. He can be beguiled with sugar, and with bread soaked in milk. As to this last dainty, like a captious child, he eats out the middle of the slice and leaves the crust!
There are three myths about the toad: first, that he can live during centuries shut up in clay or stone; this is no more true of Bufo than of his cousin Rana. The second myth is that his skin when handled causes warts, and that the fluid he discharges is poisonous; this is an idle tale. The third allegation is, that he has a jewel in his head. This has been believed from very ancient times; perhaps the story rose from the beauty of his eyes, with their iris of flame-color.
The eggs of the toad are deposited closely set side by side in a long transparent tube which is dropped into water, and sinking to the bottom coils up until the eggs hatch. The young tadpoles are jet black and very active. They make all their changes very early and in the same manner as the frog, and are quite small when they arrive at the perfect toad-shape. As soon as they have produced four legs and their tails have been absorbed, they leave the water and set off on long journeys; for the toad is a born vagrant, and not, like the frog, a home-stayer.
Avoiding the sun’s heat they travel chiefly by night, and by day hide under stones or herbage. If clouds cover the sky they take heart and hop forth on their pilgrimage. During a long drought they disappear, but if a rain comes they suddenly swarm out by hundreds, and thus have arisen the tales of a “shower of toads.”
Going one day into my garden, I saw under my favorite rose tree a little hollow in the loose earth. It looked just like the cup-shaped impression made by an egg half buried in the ground. An hour later, I found a toad seated in this place, which he had evidently fashioned for himself in order to preserve the moisture of his body, while he hunted for his dinner. His keen, black eyes were fixed on the drooping stem and leaves of the rose-bush, and out and in played his little ribbon-like tongue, capturing an insect at every dart.
The toad feeds on worms as well as flies, and when after a rain the worms and toads are mutually inspired to take their walks abroad, many a luckless worm finds its way into the toad’s maw. He never eats a dead insect.
In winter the toad hibernates like the frog, and since the young toad reaches its adult size in the autumn, it passes the first period of its grown-up life in a sleep, or coma, in some hole or burrow which it has found or fashioned in the earth. Sometimes toads creep into rock-crevices or into hollows in logs and trees, and being found in these places early in the spring, are hastily supposed to have been prisoners for many years.
The toad, as well as the frog, casts its skin in the process of growth. When the skin has become too small, and the shedding approaches, the white, green, and brown colors of the coat become dull, and a peculiar dryness appears. A new skin is forming under the outgrown one, which presently splits in half down the middle of the back and the under part of the body. The toad now begins to twist and twitch, and the old skin wrinkles and folds along the sides. Then the toad tucks a hind-leg under his forearm, and gives a good pull, and lo, he is out of that leg of his trousers. Then the other leg comes off in the same style. Next he puts one of his hands in his mouth, and giving a jerk, off comes the covering of that hand and arm, like a discarded glove. Then off with the other. Now then, what? Why, he rolls the outgrown skin into a neat ball and swallows it. No second-hand clothes sold or given away by Mr. Bufo. The frog strips off and disposes of his skin in the same way.
Toads and frogs can change to some extent the color of their skins to suit their homes. Toads kept in the dark with dark surroundings become dark in color; and those kept in light with white or light accessories become lighter;but the color of the toad changes more slowly than that of the frog. The arrangement of the color does not alter; the change is merely from light to dark.
Let us now look at some curious specimens of the Bufonidæ. The pipa, or Surinam toad, does not lay its eggs in water. The mother toad places the eggs on her back, and a fold of skin rising up encloses each egg in a separate cell, until the young have not only hatched, but have passed through all their metamorphoses, and come out fully formed. Another toad, common in Europe and Asia, is largely colored with bright crimson, and the father toad carries the little ones in separate cells fastened to his hind-legs like chains. In these cells the little ones change to their perfect shape, when the cells wither away and the young toads hop out able to take care of themselves.
We said that toads were generally silent; a little toad about three inches long, called a “natter-jack,” is common in England and is a noted singer, for a toad. His “gluck-gluck, gluck-k-k,” can be heard any night. The “green toad,” well known on the continent, is not so noisy as the natter-jack, but has a low, moaning cry.
All the true tree-toads, or Hylidæ, have clear, shrill voices,[67]and are fond of singing serenades. Like tree-frogs, tree-toads have the ends of the toes dilated into flat plates, or disks, which render their footing more secure as they hop among the branches. Our American Hylidæ are small, green-coloredwith brown markings, but in Asia they are often brightly colored. One very pretty little Hyla lives near ponds, and seated on the hard leaves of water-plants sings its shrill monotonous song.
All summer, from early April, the Hylidæ trill and sing, but as the autumn frosts come, their songs begin earlier and last longer. As the red and yellow leaves fall in showers from the trees, and the golden-rod and asters begin to faint and die among the sere grasses, the Hylidæ seem to be singing their requiem, and bewailing the coming of winter.
Another toad with a voice is the spade-foot. This toad is rare though widely distributed; it is remarkable for its feet, shaped for digging, its subterranean habits, and its curious way of appearing and disappearing very suddenly. After a rainy season the spade-foot will come out from some hiding-place, attract attention by loud cries, swarm by hundreds about ponds, lay innumerable eggs,—and vanish. But while thousands of eggs are laid, scores only hatch, for most of them perish from being laid so near the water’s edge that the subsidence of the water leaves them to dry up. While scores hatch, only tens grow up; for the spade-foot tadpoles devour one another, and are so greedy that very few survive. These few are most ravenous in their appetites. A spade-foot tadpole will seize a grasshopper, and being too small to swallow over half his prey, will calmly lie waiting for the swallowed half to digest in order that he may gulp down the remainder. As soon as a spade-foot tadpole becomes a “hopper,” getting four legs and losing its tail, it leaves the pond and indulges its digging instincts. It scrapes out a house for itself, fromeight inches to two feet in length, and cheerfully takes up an underground residence.
Thus we find that toads have three different methods of life, some being arboreal, or tree dwellers, seldom appearing on the ground; some subterranean, or underground dwellers seldom appearing on the surface; some dwellers on the ground, hiding among grass and other herbage when asleep, or when the sun is too hot for their comfort. But all toads, except the two varieties mentioned above, which carry their young on their bodies, go to the water to drop their eggs, and the young live in the water until they reach the adult state.
FOOTNOTES:[67]In the spring the common toad takes to the water and there sings loudly. The loud continuous trill that we hear in swamps in springtime is made by toads, not by frogs, as is commonly supposed.
[67]In the spring the common toad takes to the water and there sings loudly. The loud continuous trill that we hear in swamps in springtime is made by toads, not by frogs, as is commonly supposed.
[67]In the spring the common toad takes to the water and there sings loudly. The loud continuous trill that we hear in swamps in springtime is made by toads, not by frogs, as is commonly supposed.