REMARKABLE NATURAL CURIOSITY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1812, 11 April 1888, Page 3

REMARKABLE NATURAL CURIOSITY.

. — _ _ w , — _ Me Mlniy, fruiterer of Oastlemaine. opened a cocoanut the other day, and hia consternation can be Imagined on behold* ing the contents — not a quantity of milk, that delights the boy who op^ns the case, not a pint of watery fluid such as refreshes the weary traveller m hot countries, but an alive. almoßt full-grown frog was revealed to hia g£Z9. The solution of the mystery is given by Mr Lilllo Miokay, of the School of Mines. There is a small hole (£;n m diameter) at one end of the ooo:anut. Through this opening a tadpole or larval frog must have crawled iv while the fruit lay on aomo marshy ground. It would then begin to feed on the nutrient sub.tanee of the nut, but as it grew m size it oould no longer get out, and only found room for its increased proportions by eating away the interior, whioh simultaneously would serve as food for the young batraohian. Indeed, we are reminded of the quaint lines of Herbert In respect to the value the not was to the imprlsloned animal :— The Indian nut alone Is clothing, meat, and trenoher, drink and oan. all m one. At the Barne time the tadpole developed into the frog, gradually losing his tail and acquiring logs, while the growth of teeth would enable him to munch through the soft white portion of the rind. In a similar pannec the egg of an insect (diplolepis) finds a home and sustenance m the gall nut until it eats its way through and makes escape from its prison as a winged hymenopterous fly. But poor rana conld not perforate or nibble away tha hard woody exterior of the shell, and would have atarvei ere long bat for the happy rescue effected by the fruiterer, who cracked the nut and found a nest with a living frog inside aa snugly secreted as the infant Moses was m the ark of bulrushes when discovered by Pharoafi's daughter on the river bank. The frog usually freds on worms, insects, and molluscs, but on this occasion he has had, from the force nf necessity, to become a vegetarian, and evidently has thrived on his simple faro, notwithstanding bis long confinement — ''Bendigo Advertiser."