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Zamua-2 Directory 05
Page 10
Tree-frogs have, of course, in most circumstances much greater difficulty in getting at water than pond-frogs; and this is especially true in certain tropical or desert districts. Hence most of the frogs which inhabit such regions have had to find out or invent some ingenious plan for passing through the tadpole stage with a minimum of moisture. The devices they have hit upon are very curious. Some of them make use of the little pools collected at the bases of huge tropical leaf-stalks, like those of the banana plant; others dispense with the aid of water altogether, and glue their new-laid eggs to their own backs, where the fry pass through the tadpole stage with the slimy mucus which surrounds them. Nature always discovers such cunning schemes to get over apparent difficulties in her way: and the tree-frogs have solved the problem for themselves in half a dozen manners in different localities. Oddest of all, perhaps, is the dodge invented by "Darwin's frog," a Chilean species, in which the male swallows the eggs as soon as laid, and gulps them into the throat-pouch beneath his capacious neck: there they hatch out and pass through their tadpole stage: and when at last they arrive at frogly maturity, they escape into the world through the mouth of their father.
We went along the banks of the beautiful island of Antas, after which we halted at the house of Jose Maracati, a Mundurucu chieftain, with thirty Indians under him. A delegate of the Para Province in charge of the Indians--a man of strong Malay characteristics and evidently of Indian parentage--received us, and gave me much information about the local rubber industry. He told me that the best rubber found in that region was the kind locally called _seringa preta_, a black rubber which was coagulated with the smoke of the _coco de palmeira_. He calculated that 150 rubber trees gave about 14 kilos of rubber a day. The _seringa preta_ exuded latex all the year round, even during the rainy season.
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