Aged Tadpoles

Abstract

THE experience of your correspondent Mr. John Don (February 17, p. 458) is no new one. More than twenty years ago we had in a small aquarium in the Charterhouse Museum a tadpole two years of age. To the best of my recollection this veteran never acquired any legs, either hind or front, but the head and body were extraordinarily large. At the present moment I have in my laboratory seven living tadpoles reared from spawn deposited last spring. Of these, three only have developed hind legs. These appendages appeared rather suddenly in December, a few days after I had supplied, for the first time, some fragments of hard-boiled egg.