94 OUR REPTILES. 



food of the tadpole, seasoned perhaps with a small 

 quantity of minute animal life, the Frog is almost 

 entirely insectivorous. Its favourite food consists 

 of all kinds of minute insects, such as the little 

 green plant-lice, which are the pest of gardeners, 

 other larger insects, small slugs, and such forms of 

 animal life. This habit ought to procure for frogs, 

 not only the protection, but the fostering care of 

 gardeners and all cultivators of the soil. How much 

 less cause would they have to complain of insect 

 enemies, if they would but exercise more care in 

 the preservation and increase of toads and frogs, 

 and establish on their own domains a kind of " local 

 game law," instead of winking at the persecution, if 

 not really encouraging the extirpation, of their 

 best friends. It is strange that Nature should so 

 well provide for the " balance of power," and that 

 man should so pertinaciously endeavour to overturn 

 her work, by the wholesale destruction of insecti- 

 vorous birds, or the persecution of harmless and 

 beneficent reptiles. Yet in the primeval forests, 

 where sparrow clubs are unknown, and insectivorous 

 animals dwell unmolested, no evidence can be traced 

 of any great mistake which Nature has made in the 

 preponderance of any given forms, nor can we trace 

 any manifest " bungle " which requires the wisdom 

 of " the lord of the creation " to put right. 



Of all reptiles submitted to incarceration none 



