Frogs, and their Contributions to Science. 123 



become thereby less difficult to understand. In a some- 

 what similar, and yet by no means scientific way, we pro- 

 pose to study frogs. 



The skeleton of the frog, if placed upright, has a suffi- 

 ciently human appearance to pass at first sight for that of 

 a lilliputian child, which had been affected by some disease 

 of the spine. There is certainly enough resemblance to 

 permit the use in masquerade or comic woodcut of the 

 batrachian form as the basis of caricature, a thing which 

 cannot be done with many other animal forms. 



The maxillary bones differ from each other, in that the 

 upper alone is furnished with teeth. These are set closely 

 together around the jaw, not springing from alveoli, but 

 implanted on the bone. They number forty-two, with 

 eight placed traversely on the vomer, called the palatine 

 teeth. In taking their food, there seems nothing like 

 mastication, the teeth serving rather as prehensile agents 

 to prevent the escape of the struggling insect although to 

 a certain degree the palatine teeth must triturate it, as 

 pressed upward by the tongue it passes into the esophagus. 

 The cavity of the cranium is quite small, and we cannot 

 claim for the frog from its phrenological developments, a 

 large degree of intellectual power. It is sufficient, how- 

 ever, for all the practical purposes of his being. His per- 

 ceptive faculties are good, as shown by his capture of 

 insects in their rapid flight upon the wing; his judgment 

 as to distances tolerably accurate, as shewn when dis- 

 turbed on land by his reaching his haven of water by a 

 single leap ; he has a quick ear to apprehend danger, and 

 one seemingly appreciative of his own music, and he is 

 eminently sociable with his kind in the spring time of the 

 year, and also during the season of hybernation. 



His spinal column is made up of nine vertebrae, all of 

 which, except the atlas, have long transverse processes, 

 the coccyx is peculiar in its length, being almost as long 



