THE HORNED FROG. 



677 



frog in iEsop's fables trying to make himself as big as a cow ; and he 

 is covered all over with a number of spines, which are not unlike the 

 spines on a blackthorn-bush. The edges of the flattened body are 

 armed with a row of sharp prickles like the teeth of a saw ; the head, 

 which the little beast twists about in a Punch-like manner, is separated 

 from the body by a short neck. Near the nape of the neck there are 

 two sharp-pointed horns directed backward ; the sides of the neck are 

 armed with three or four shorter horns, so that the animal appears to 

 have on a collar such as we see depicted upon the necks of wolf-hounds 



The Hobned Feog. 



in Reidinger's splendid old German hunting pictures. The general 

 color is like that of the toad, and he has a mottled belly, like that poor 

 old toad about which so many " crammers " have been told relative to 

 his being found buried in coal, stone, trees, etc. antediluvian toads, 

 " who swam about in the limpid streams wherein Adam bathed his 

 sturdy limbs," etc. Toads, nevertheless, will stand a deal of burying ; 

 and so will horned frogs, for the individual whose likeness is now 

 before you came by post all the way from Santiago, in Southern Cali- 

 fornia. He was packed in a thin pasteboard box, and it is a wonder 



