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Updated: June 15, 2025
It was then like a vast lake to us, although the water was not more than about three feet deep, and at such times it was infested with the big venomous toad-like creature called escuerzo in the vernacular, which simply means toad, but naturalists have placed it in quite a different family of the batrachians and call it Ceratophrys ornata It is toad- like in form but more lumpish, with a bigger head; it is big as a man's fist, of a vivid green with black symmetrical markings on its back, and primrose-yellow beneath.
The batrachians, in the northeastern part of our country, include the salamanders and newts, the frogs and toads, while as reptiles we number lizards, turtles, and snakes. Lizards are creatures of the tropics and only two small species are found in our vicinity, and these occur but rarely.
Now, if such close relations of homology can be brought about independently of any but the most remote genetic affinity, it would be rash to affirm dogmatically that there is any impossibility in the independent origin of such forms as centetes and solenodon, or of genetically distinct batrachians, as similar to each other as are some of the frogs of South America and of Europe.
"Fugax sequax, sequax fugax," the pedant rejoined; "these four Latin words, which have a cabalistic sound, not unlike the croaking of certain batrachians, and might have been borrowed, one would say, from the 'Comedy of the Frogs, by one Aristophanes, an Athenian poet, contain the very pith and marrow of all theories of love and lovemaking; they would make a capital rule to regulate everybody's conduct of the virile as well as of the fair sex."
So it is with birds; but many cock birds do not so much pursue the hen, as display their plumage, perform strange antics, and pour forth their song in her presence. The male in the few fish observed seems much more eager than the female; and the same is true of alligators, and apparently of Batrachians.
All the foregoing remarks on the inhabitants of oceanic islands, namely, the scarcity of kinds the richness in endemic forms in particular classes or sections of classes, the absence of whole groups, as of batrachians, and of terrestrial mammals notwithstanding the presence of aerial bats, the singular proportions of certain orders of plants, herbaceous forms having been developed into trees, etc., seem to me to accord better with the view of occasional means of transport having been largely efficient in the long course of time, than with the view of all our oceanic islands having been formerly connected by continuous land with the nearest continent; for on this latter view the migration would probably have been more complete; and if modification be admitted, all the forms of life would have been more equally modified, in accordance with the paramount importance of the relation of organism to organism.
Proceeding on her way, as the road passed into the swampy land of Klingenspiel's domain, her attention was engaged by the fact that a most singular commotion was taking place among the giant batrachians at some remote place south of the road.
They were marching along the inner edge of the stone-work of the garden-pond, where I have replaced the old batrachians by a colony of Gold-fish. The wind was blowing very hard from the north and, taking the column in flank, sent whole rows of the Ants flying into the water. The fish hurried up; they watched the performance and gobbled up the drowning insects.
I could tell you a thousand other particulars about these batrachians if I were to examine them all in succession; for it is a very motley family, in the bosom of which the transition from reptiles to fishes is in some imperceptible manner accomplished; from the frog, which the unanimous consent of mankind has always ranked among reptiles, to the axolotl or siren, who lives in Mexican lakes; and who, feature for feature, is exactly like a carp, with four little feet fastened under him.
These strata are of great thickness, perhaps a thousand feet in some places; and along with such shells as Paludina, Planorbis, and Limnæa are also found remains of various other animals, such as fish, serpents, batrachians, crocodiles, ruminants, and those of huge pachyderms, as Rhinoceros, Dinotherium, and Cænotherium.
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