We must own that such a father acts with singular devotion. It should be noted that seventeen eggs only are laid by the mother, a much smaller number than is common among the species where neither parent affords any kind of guardianship. This is what we should expect. Nature has different ways of gaining the same end. Life must be carried on, that is all that matters—an incessant renewal, an undying fresh beginning and unfolding of life. But a species is maintained sometimes by the prodigality of production and sometimes by the expenditure of care and sacrifice on the part of the parents. And here we find again a lesson waiting for us to learn. For it is hardly necessary to point out that the same facts are true of human births; just as the family is unregulated or considered, do we find waste and many births with parental neglect in the first case and restricted births with parental devotion in the second. There seem to be no problems of the family that these pre-human parents have not had to face and solve. But to return. “The celebrated Midwife toad (_Alytes obstetricans_) gives us a further delightful example of the father nursing the young. The mother-toad lays her eggs attached to one another by threads so that they form a long chain. The father-toad then twines this chaplet of his wife’s eggs round and round his thighs. He has the strange appearance, it has been said, of a gentleman of the court of the time of James I, arrayed in puffed breeches. His devotion is very complete. After having encumbered himself with the coming family, he retreats to a hole in the ground. Here he stays with admirable patience by day, stealing forth at night to feed, and to bathe his egg-burdened legs in dew or, when possible, in water. When his period of service is past and the young are ready for quitting the eggs, he seeks the water. Here before long the young burst forth and swim away, whereupon the father, now free from his family duties, makes himself tidy (cleans himself of the remains of the eggs) and resumes his normal appearance.” With some frogs, as, for example, in certain S. American and African species, the parents take up the burden of caring for the young only after they have reached the tadpole stage. The German naturalist Brauer recently found in the Seychelles islands a small frog (_Arthroleptis Seychellensis_) undertaking the guardianship of the young family. An adult frog (it is not stated whether it was the father or the mother) was carrying nine tadpoles on its back, to which they were attached by a sucker on the belly. Unfortunately, little is known of the habits of these frogs. It is believed that the eggs are laid in some shallow pool, and that later one or other parent returns to the nursery to take up the care of the young tadpoles.