ge of any moderate stream. Within a short time their
flutelike, quivering voice is heard far and wide. That this note has
an attractive power over the female there is no doubt. She herself
makes no effort to imitate, but the song of her mate is persistent and
exceedingly sweet. I have seen a male sit upon a clump of grass and
utter his love call. Before he had been singing for more than half a
minute three females hastened toward him from a distance of perhaps
twenty feet. Each seemed anxious to reach as promptly as possible the
creature whose voice had proved so attractive. When the mating comes,
the female discharges a series of small shotlike eggs which are
encased in a very tenacious mucous. While they are being deposited the
male fertilizes them. No sooner have the eggs, fertilized by the sperm
cells, reached the water than the mucous at once begins to swell. The
result is that eggs appear encased in two slender strings of jelly,
each having a diameter about that of a lead pencil. At intervals of
not more than half an inch the shotlike eggs may be seen. The mother
toad, in laying these eggs, moves about rather restlessly in the
water. By this means she succeeds in wrapping the strings about the
grass and sticks of the pool. This will hold them quite safely even
against a considerable current of water, should the stream rise and
flood the side pools in which the eggs are laid. With this amount of
care, however, the attention of both parents to the young entirely
ceases. They are now abandoned to the chances of a fortune to them
exceedingly unkind. A toad will lay about five hundred eggs. It is
evident that on the average only two of these can attain maturity by
the time the parents have died, for the number of toads does not
materially alter season by season. The connecting string is made up
not of nourishment for the eggs, but of a bitter mucous so unpleasant
to the taste that fish are thus deterred from eating the otherwise
nourishing material. This secures for the young embryo a chance to
mature which in the absence of the jelly it would entirely lack.
Imbedded in this mucous is the embryo itself, surrounded by a small
amount of albumen and containing inside of itself a very considerable
amount of yolk. This gives to the egg a volume possibly a hundred
times that of the egg of the sunfish. Thus, even counting the care the
parent sunfish took of its offspring, which care is very uncommon
among fishes, the toad stan