LESSON XLVIII.

_MORE ABOUT FROGS._

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1. Each Mrs. Frog lays about one thousand eggs, and if they all

hatched and grew, every swampy country would soon be overrun with

frogs.

2. But fish, birds, and serpents eat them in such numbers that they

only about hold their own year by year. Some kinds of frogs are also

found to be good food for men, and are caught for that purpose.

3. Frogs are lively and noisy in the first warm days of spring and

summer. The little peeping frogs keep up their shrill music all night

and day, and with it we hear the deep voice of the bull-frog, like a

bass-drum heard at a distance.

4. The bull-frog is the largest of the frog kind. It eats worms,

insects, and snails, and sometimes it even eats its own tadpoles.

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5. In summer, we hear among the trees a shrill kind of whirring sound,

which is kept up for a long time without any pause. This is the song

of the tree-frog, sometimes called the tree-toad.

6. This is a very small frog. It is born in the water, like other

frogs; but when it comes out in the spring, it climbs into the trees

and lives there.

7. Its feet spread out into broad, flat toes, from the bottom of which

comes out a sticky fluid. By means of these toes, which partly act as

suckers, the frog can crawl along on the under side of branches

without falling.

8. The color of the tree-frog is so much like that of the wood it

clings to that it can not be seen unless we look very closely for it.

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