Foreword to the 1995 Printing

Abstract

Roy W. McDiarmid In 1933, Comstock Publishing Company issued Anna Allen Wright and Albert Hazen Wright's Handbook of Frogs and Toads: The Frogs and Toads of the United States and Canada. The first of three editions, it was also the inaugural volume in the popular Comstock series, Handbooks of American Natural History. The first edition, 231 pages long, was published in a small format with a flexible cover. It began with a general introduction to frog natural history in the format of a species account, which was followed by keys to adults of species within each family of North American frogs. Next came the heart of the book, the species accounts. Most species accounts in the first edition were two pages long and followed the outline of the General Account. Included were comments on common and scientific names, the range and habitat of the species, its size, general appearance and distinctive structures, a description of its voice, and pertinent field notes from the Wrights' own observations as well as from colleagues and the literature. The accounts also detailed aspects of the species' breeding biology, including descriptions of eggs, tadpoles, development, and metamorphosis. Typically, each account included a plate with three to nine photographs of live adults and sometimes of eggs and larvae. The Wrights had extensive field experience with the amphibians and reptiles of North America and took more than 12,000 photographs of these organisms (Adler, 1989). They placed considerable value on photographs of living specimens and in this regard were likely influenced by The Frog Book (Dickerson, 1907), another highly successful and well-illustrated book on frogs and toals of North America. Most photographs in the Handbook of Frogs and Toads were taken by the Wrights and newly published; some seemingly were the first published for the species. Several photographs had appeared in earlier works (e.g., A. H. Wright, 1914, 1932), and a few species (e.g., Rana tarahumarae) were represented by photographs of preserved specimens. The accounts of some species (e.g., Leptodactylus albilabris and Eleutherodactylus augustz) were illustrated with drawings from the literature; others, including that for Acris crepitans, lacked photographs altogether. A second edition of the book, with the same title and order of authors, appeared f'ine years later. A hardcover volume in a slightly larger format, it had expanded to 286 pages and followed much the same style and organization of the first edition. Accounts and photographs of a few species (e.g., Acris crepitans) and subspecies (e.g., Bufo boreas nelsoni, Pseudacris nigrita verrucosa) not recognized or illustrated ih the first edition were added, as were photographs of