FROG MAN

My fellow local herpetologists and I have noted the decline of frogs, but we did not know that it was part of a larger syndrome. In Southern California, it is easy to blame everything on development and habitat destruction. This, apparently, is not the case worldwide. I do know that places I went for frogs when I was a student in the early ‘60s no longer support any semblance of the frog populations extant at that time.

If Jennings and Mark Hayes and other herpetologists concerned with the decline in amphibians are correct in their theories about why these animals are disappearing, I think we have a lot to think about--but we better do it quickly before this decline spreads irretrievably to the rest of the biome, including us.

JERROLD J. FELDNER

Van Nuys