Journal of Proceedings, lxxvii
In commencing the scientific business of the evening, the President
directed attention to the specimens of Fungi from the Forest, fifty species
in all, which had been preserved for the Club's Museum by Mr. English,
in fulfilment of an order from the Secretary. They were capital speci-
mens, and would form a nice nucleus for a collection of the Fungi of
Essex, which he hoped ere long to see in their Museum.
The Rev. W. Linton Wilson read the following note on some Tadpoles
which he had had in his Aquarium since the early summer, and which
were still true tadpoles, not having changed into frogs:—
" On June 25th last year the Club did me the honour to hold a meeting
at Oakhurst, Chigwell. On that occasion I had a number of tadpoles of
the Common Frog in a bell-glass. They were very lively and well, living
in the broad daylight among Starwort, duckweed, ivy-leaved duckweed,
and water crowfoot, and accompanied by fresh-water mussels, snails,
newts, boatmen, beetles, a good many larva?, shrimps, and mites. Some
of them had already developed their hind legs, others were not so forward.
" I am writing on the 7th of January, 1882, and many of those tad-
poles are still tadpoles, and little tadpoles too !
" They ought of course long ago to have developed true lungs, to have
absorbed their fish-like gills, to have produced first the hind legs, and
then a fortnight later the fore legs, and finally they ought to have
absorbed their tails. Then they would have continued to live as frogs,
and left the water, to return to it only occasionally. They have not
grown, they have not developed. And I am inclined to think that one or
two of them that had at one time put forth a little bud for their hind
legs, gradually absorbed it again and returned to the first tadpole stage.
" In order to try whether a change of condition would induce any
further growth or development, on the 1st of December I removed four
of them to a vessel having a sloping bottom so arranged that the
animals could get out of the water if they chose to do so. In a fort-
night they were all dead. The remainder continued to live in the
bell-glass.
" The glass has always had an abundant supply of floating weed,
and an island of cork. But the water has been about four inches
from the top, and has remained unchanged since June 12th, except
that on the 1st of December we added four or five gallons of well-
water to it, to make up the loss by evaporation."*
Mr. Lockyer remarked that he recollected seeing, when at Oakhurst, in
June last, a very thick growth of duck-weed on the top of the water in
the aquarium, and he suggested that this dense growth might have inter-
fered with the well-being of the little animals, perhaps by shutting off
the necessary supply of free atmospheric air.
Mr. W. Cole called attention to the fact, possibly bearing upon the
subject then under discussion, that frogs (very small ones) were often seen
in gardens free from water, and so surrounded by walls that it was difficult
to see how they could have wandered in from any neighbouring pond.
He suggested, as a possible solution, that under certain conditions the
whole larval life of the creature might be passed within the egg, the
* An instance of retarded development in tadpoles of the Smooth Newt (Lissotriton
punctatas) is recorded by Mr. G. T. Rope in ' Zoologist' for April, 1882 (vol. vi. 3rd ser.
15'2.) The facts noted by Mr. Rope are very similar to those observed by Mr. Wilson.—Ed.