WILD LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND

Otago Witness, Issue 3434, 6 January 1920, Page 61

WILD LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND

By the Hon. G. M. Thomson, F.L.S. NO. 76.—FROGS (Continued). In 1867 the Auckland Society introduced two specimens of the Australian Green Frog (Hyla aurea) into the country, and in the following year received several more small lots from Sydney. They increased quickly, and are now abundant all over the North Island.

The Canterbury Society received some frogs in 1867 from the Hobart Acclimatisation Society, and in the following year some tadpoles from Mr Alport, of Hobart, and from Mr W. L. Hawkins. The Southland Society received some spawn (from Hobart ?) in 1868, which was hatched at the Wallacetown Ponds. Frogs were soon carried to various places on the Southland Plains, but they did not thrive at all, and had all disappeared by 1890. These appear to have been all the direct importations of this species. The Otago Society obtained about 60 frogs and tadpoles from Napier in 1888, and liberated them in a marsh. But the same experience was met with as occurred in Southland; they were seen about for a few days, and then all disappeared. It is possible that in both cases wild ducks of some kind or other accounted for them all. Later on, others were brought down from the north, and were liberated in Otago and Southland, and they throve. They are now common throughout the South Island. Mr Dansey informed me that these frogs were introduced into the Rotorua district by-Captain Gilbert Mair about 1878. He says: "I well remember the uneasiness and consternation in the Native village upon some Native excitedly reporting his having seen a peculiar 'ngarara' (reptile) in a pond near the lake, and describing that it had fingers and toes, and swam like a human being. Dread was expressed at the idea of swallowing young orites while drinking water that they might grow inside to gnaw away at their stomachs. Others ascribed the bringing: into the district of such reptiles as the doings of some evil-minded Europeans to wipe out the Natives and secure their lands."

In my last paper I gave some account of the history of this frog. I niust now narrate a strange incident which shows the remarkable vitality possessed by it. In December, 1884, my wife and I left Dunedin for a trip in the North Island, our house being in charge, of a housekeeper during our absence. In the front hall there stood a large ornnamental ferncase, filled with local ferns (Hymenophyllum, Trichomanes, Asplenium, etc.), and in this case lived a full-frown Green Frog, which, however, seldom showed itself. We were absent about six weeks, returning at the end of January, 1885. The ferns had not been watered in our absence, with the result that all the filmy and more delicate ones were dead. - My wife was too dissappointed to start refilling the case, so it was carried out to a lumber room in an outside shed, and left there for over a year. .In March, 1886, Mrs ' Thomson thought she would like the case re-stocked with ferns, so I personally set to work to empty out the old perfectly dry material, and incidentally searched for the skeleton of the frog. I could not find it anywhere, but in the bottom of the case, under one of the largest dead ferns, -was. a lump of clayey soil about four inches in diameter, quite dry externally. On breaking this up I was 'intensely surprised to find the frog, looking very much as it was -when we last saw it 15 months before, and perfectly cool and moist. I at once put it into a glass vessel, and shut a common house-fly in, when the frog immediately came to attention, and caught and ate the fly. It fed quite freely afterwards, and lived for some months, when it perished by a singular accident. Its little glass-house was left standing on my microscope table in a window facing the midday sun. A large bull's-eye condenser stood on the table nearer the window, and this unfortunately focussed the sun's rays on to the glass case, and when discovered half an hour afterwards the unfortunate frog was dead. The ball of clay in which the frog was found after its 15 months' imprisonment was not, as far as either of us could remember, in the case originally. We both thought that the animal had in some way or other gathered it together as a protection, but how it managed to get inside the ball and apparently leave no external aperture, I cannot explain. It seems to me that the incident throws some light on the stories which one occasionally reads in newspapers about frogs being found inside of rocks and stones. Our frog was not in a rock, but it was inside a remarkably hard piece of clay, and yet it managed to breathe and retain its moisture for that long period of time.

I thought that my experience was unique, but in a paper read by Mr A. W. Aitken to the Auckland Institute on November 15, 1869, he described a phenomenon which he witnessed in Australia in a dried-up area. "Mr A. W. Howitt and I, with a black boy, had made a two day's journey on horseback from the last known water without, finding any more, and had we gone on further our hoTS.es would probably have been unable to return. We were much in want of water, and had camped for the night in the midst of a great manv dried-up waterhol«s, with a few salt-bushes growing on their margins, intending to turn next morning. I noticed the boy examining the dry surface of the water-holes, and went to see what he was doing. He pointed out an indistinct and crooked mark, on what had once been mud, and following it to where it apparently ceased, in the shade of a small salt-bush, he began to dig with a sharp stick, and in a short time turned out a ball of clay about eight inches in diameter, and quite dry outside, which, when broken, disclosed a frog shut up in a beautifully puddled cell, with more than half a pint of fine, clear, cold water. We afterwards

dug out many others, drinking the water and eating the frogs. "A sudden or gradual disposition-" of matter over such ground would have shut up these frogs for ever, and if they live through months, and even years, in such £ situation, within range of the effects of a scorching sun, we can understand how they have lived for ages in the cool and moist recesses of the rocks in which they are sometimes found." I do not know about the "ages," but our frog lived for 15 months, and there Beemed no reason why it might not have continued to live for some years. Of course, all the time it was breathing, however slowly, and it must have been wasting away so slowly, and such a process cannot last for ever.

In Mrs Rowan's book, "A Flower-hunter in Queensland and New Zealand," she refers to a kind' of frog living at Goondi. probably the same species as our imported one, and gives much the same information as Mr Aitken does as to its living in clay balls in- drought areas, and shutting up a quantity of water in each. There is, or was recently, another Australian frog naturalised in this country. This little species, known as the Australian Brown Frog 1 or Whistling Frog (HyTa ewingii, var. calliscelis), was introduced in a curious manner. A Mr W. Perkins brought some over from Tasmania in a bottle in 1875, and liberated them in a drain in Alexandra street, - Greymouth. From there thev spread up the Grey River some 24 miles to Ahura, oh the south bank, but do not seem to have got to the north side. They also spread south for a few miles. Three years later Mr F. E. Clarke read a paper before the W-estland Institute on a tadpole found in a drain in Hokitika. He says: "No frogs or frogs' spawn having been introduced nearer to the West Coast of New Zealand than Nelson and Christchurch, it is puzzling to conjecture in what manner this little stranger arrived." He did not know about the Greymouth frogs at the time. Someone had probably carried either some frogs or some tadpoles to Hokitika, for the species is scarcely or not at all found between the two centres. About 1900 Mr James King, of Hokitika, brought some of the frogs from Greymouth, and they increased for a time, but he informed me later that they are now very rare, if not extinct, at Hokitika. having been apparently displaced bv the larger Hyla aurea, which has spread to the West Coast from either north or east.

This little Whistling Frog is one of the commonest frogs of Eastern Australia and Tasmania, Though it has nearly lost the tree-climbing habit in its native country, it has been seen in Greymouth "climbing over blackberry bushes at a height of from six to eight feet above the ground." At least two, if not three other species of frogs have been introduced to New Zealand, but have not succeeded in establishing themselves. In 1897 the Agri-, cultural Department introduced six dozen climbing frogs from Sydney. Mr T. W. Kirk said of them in his report for 1898: "This frog is similar to the ordinary frog, so common in many parts of New Zealand, except that it has a very considerable advantage over that species in that its toes are provided with suckers, which enable the animal to climb trees and houses in search of insects. In Sydney i have seen these frogs at the top of a wall four stories''high." No one knows what species this is, but the Australian Museum authorities think it is probably Hyla ccerulea. These frogs were liberated at three localities in Hawke's Bay. In 1899 another lot was introduced. Some of these were set free in the Wellington Botanical Gardens, some at Nelson, others on the island of Motuihi, near Auckland, and a fourth lot at Paraparaumu. Later on some were liberated on the Government Experimental Station at Moumahaki. None have ever been seen since, and yet it is just possible that they may have survived in some localities. Mr Killen, of Whangarei, told me that when he was at Kaikohe in 1913-14 he saw and held in his haid a small green frog which was quite different from the common Hyla aurea. Unfortunately, the specimen was not preserved or identified. In 1856 two frogs were brought out to Nelson in a wardian case, but we do not know what kind they were. Again in 1867 large edible frogs were introduced into Nelson, with the idea of providing food for wild ducks. Presumably the common British water-frog (Eana esculenta) was the species experimented upon, but they were never seen again. Lastly, in 1864 Mr A. M. Johnson imported 30 frogs from Britain, apparently the common European Brown or Grass Frog (Rana temporaria), but he kept no record of them. However, in the report of the Canterbury Acclimatisation Society for 1868 the following paragraph appears: "The old original frog which was imported into the colony by Mr Murray-Aynsley, and which at one time drew a concourse of three hundred visitors to the Gardens in one day, is supposed to have been swallowed by a stray swan." So it is clear that several people have tried to bring frogs into the country.

We have no toads in this country, yet at least two attempts have been made to naturalise them. The Canterbury Society got 12 from Hobart in 1867, but kept no record of them. In. 1893 Mr W. Chambers, of Gisborne, introduced 34 toads from Britain, and turned out most of them in a swamp. Thev were seen for a year or more, and then completely disr appeared. There is no difficulty about Introducing them, and they would 'be very useful creatures in gardens, for they eat"slugs, woodlice. and other yermin, and do no harm, and it is rather singular that thev have not been naturalised here.