Frogs, and their Contributions to Science. 121 



his subjects. Frogs have been essentially democratic ever 

 since, as their free speech and seemingly equal rights in 

 the pursuit of animal happiness testify. 



Homer, the broadest winged of the Grecian poets, did 

 not deem them unworthy of his song. The battle of the 



Frogs and Mice, -rolt^x^^^x 1 ^ w ^ ^ ve as l° n g as tne story 

 of the siege of Troy. Once are they spoken of in sacred his- 

 tory and though in a way not pleasant to think of, as a 

 plague, yet as the ministers of God, to turn the heart 

 of Pharaoh, we in vest that croaking army of frogs that came 

 up from pool, and river-side, and covered the borders of 

 Egypt with #11 s the awe and sanctity of a divine mission. 

 However poorly esteemed, they can never lose the sacred 

 character attaching to them, from this fact, that they were 

 once selected as the special instruments of a divine pur- 

 pose. 



The geological record of animal forms, that lived 

 unnumbered ages ago, unfolds here and there a fossil 

 representative of the class we are considering. In those 

 days of exuberant vegetable and animal life, batrachian 

 forms of wondrous size and beauty perhaps, lived and 

 sported, and departing left behind them foot-prints if not 

 on the " sands of time," yet, most certainly, on the new 

 red sandstones of Saxony and Connecticut. Admitting 

 their antediluvian existence, it would not, from our know- 

 ledge of their natant powers, require much imagination 

 to suppose them independent survivors of the flood, did 

 not plutonic action and a probably high temperature of 

 water — for the frog dies at 107° F. — forbid the idea. 

 I have read that in a German museum there is a single 

 specimen, that was found imbedded in amber, and that 

 this is the only known instance of an antediluvian amphi- 

 bian, that has come down to us, with its external charac- 

 teristics preserved. A fitting entombment this, in fragrant 



[Trans. vi.~\ 16 



