Colour Schemes.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20539, 14 February 1935, Page 8

Colour Schemes.

Nature Notes

By James Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S. JJTROGS are notorious for their lightning changes of costumes. Few are more adept at this than the common green frog of Australia. During the past sixty-seven years, it has enlarged the borders of its tent to take in the whole of New Zealand as well as all Australia, except the central and northern parts. It is the only frog in New Zealand known to the general public, the two species of native frogs living retired lives in isolated districts. Ordinarily, it wears pea-green above and purple below. There are golden bands on its back. The limbs are mottled in green and yellow, with splashes of bluish-green and orange. This brilliant costume is for swamps and shallow pools, where rushes grow'. There the males croak sonorously, and not unmusically. On the ground, or on the floor, green and gold are changed to brown. The brighter colours are resumed in the old haunts. There is a record of a member of this species in Australia that sought refuge amongst coal. It immediately put on black, harmonising perfectly with its lodgings. Dr Hans Gadow kept an Australian frog in England, whose upper parts were olive and blue. Sometimes it was saturated w'ith blue and green, and had stripes of burnished copper along the back. A few minutes later, the stripes glittered like gold. In other moods, the upper parts w’ere mottled in blue, green and gold.