From A. R. Carrington 15 November 1880
Royal Agricultural College | Cirencester.
15 Nov. 1880—
Sir,
In reading one of your books lately, I came to a passage in which the non-existence of frogs in New Zealand is mentioned—1 Some ten years ago I was in New Zealand, and attached to a Surveying party under Government.— We were engaged in traversing the bed of a very rocky mountain stream near a new digging settlement called Te Tiki situated on the Coromandel peninsula, not far from Kapanga or Coromandel— We had our camp in a very remote and almost inaccessible part of the range by the side of the stream and one day when I was off duty and engaged in tracing a small vein of quartz across the bed of the stream with the hope of finding gold, I found a small green frog in a crevice— It was about the size of the little green tree frogs found in the south of Europe, only of a darker green & slightly blotched with black or dark brown, and its feet were only partially webbed— I kept it in a match box for some time but it died, and having no spirit I was unable to preserve it— I lived in NZ altogether about 5 years, nearly always in the Bush, and this is the only one I ever saw or heard of—with the exception of some ordinary brown frogs wh. were said to have been found in the settled districts near Auckland, but for these I cannot answer—2 I have taken the liberty of writing, as I thought the above facts, for which I can vouch, might be of interest to you—
I am, Sir, | faithfully yours | A. R. Carrington (Lecturer on Field-Engineering &c. RA.C)
Footnotes
Bibliography
Bell, Ben D. and Bishop, Phillip J. 2018. Status of decline and conservation of frogs in New Zealand. In Status of conservation and decline of amphibians: Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific Islands, edited by Harold Heatwole and Jodi J. L. Rowley. Clayton South, Australia: CSIRO Publishing.
Origin 6th ed.: The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. 6th edition, with additions and corrections. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1872.
Summary
ARC found a frog in New Zealand; contradicts CD [in Origin, 6th ed. (1872), p. 350.]
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-12822
- From
- Alexander Randall Carrington
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- R. Agric. Coll., Cirencester
- Source of text
- DAR 161: 50
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12822,” accessed on 27 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12822.xml