Abstract
IN reading the letter of your correspondent, Mr. Mott, on the cry of the frog, it struck me as curious that there should be resemblances which people in countries wide apart should pitch on the same phrase to indicate. Now, there could not be a better way of conveying a sound which frequently greets one's ears in the country in Bengal during the rains, than that which your correspondent makes use of, “the cry of a new-born infant.” Few residents in the country here, we take it, who have lived anywhere near jungle, will have failed to bear, and that tolerab'y frequent, the unspeakably plaintive wail which indicates that the remorseless ophidian has seized his prey, and that deglutition has commenced. If one be tolerably quick he may, as I have frequently done, guide himself to the very spot by the sound of the frog, and the snake will then, in his alarm and anxiety to escape, frequently let the frog go, though he as often slides off with it protruding from his mouth. We have the batrachians in great force here, and of all sizes and noises, from the great swamp frog which, as soon as the lands are drenched in the heavy rainstorms of May, commences its nocturnal bellowing, down to the bronze tree frog with gilt eyebrows that keeps up its metallic tink.
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B., C. Snakes and Frogs. Nature 11, 167 (1874). https://doi.org/10.1038/011167c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/011167c0
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