their natural food to remain before them untouched, yet if it make the smallest motion, they instantly seize it. A knowledge of this circumstance enabled Dr. Townson to feed his favourite Tree-frog, Musidora, through the winter. Before the flies, which were her usual food, had disappeared in autumn, he collected for her a great quantity, as winter provision. When he laid any of them before her, she took no notice of them; but the moment he moved them with his breath, she sprung upon and ate them. Once when flies were scarce, the Doctor cut some flesh of a tortoise into small pieces, and moved these by the same means. She seized them, but the instant afterwards rejected them from her tongue. After he had obtained her confidence, she ate from his fingers dead as well as living flies. Frogs will leap at a moving shadow of any small object; and both Frogs and Toads will soon become sufficiently familiar to sit on the hand, and be carried from one side of the room to the other in order to catch flies as they settle on the wall. At Gottingen, Dr. Townson made them his guards for keeping these troublesome creatures from his dessert of fruit, and they acquitted themselves to his satisfaction. He has even seen the small Tree-frogs eat humble bees, but this was never done without some contest. The Frogs were in general obliged to reject them, being incommoded by their stings and hairy roughness; but in each attempt the bee was farther covered with viscid matter from the Frog’s tongue, and, when sufficiently covered with this, it was easily swallowed.[1]
- ↑ “Bingley’s Animal Biography,” iii. 162.
