116 BUFONIDA. 
emblem of all that is malicious and hateful in the human 
character, it is placed under universal ban, and treated 
as an outlaw both by man and boy throughout the coun- 
try. Should I be able, by the following history of its 
habits and manners, to shew that it is, on the contrary, 
highly useful, perfectly harmless, inoffensive, and even 
timid, and susceptible of no inconsiderable degree of dis- 
criminating attachment to those who treat it with kind- 
ness, it is hoped that some few individuals may be thus 
rescued from those barbarous acts of cruelty to which the 
species is almost everywhere subjected. The mistaken 
notions to which I have alluded are indeed pardonable in 
the ignorant and uneducated; but that one professing to 
be an observer and an admirer of the works of nature, 
should have suffered his prejudices to dictate such a violent 
and false philippic against this harmless creature, as the 
following passage from Pennant, is not easily to be ac- 
counted for, and scarcely to be forgiven :— 
He calls it ‘‘the most deformed and hideous of all ani- 
mals; the body broad; the back flat, and covered with a 
pimply dusky hide ; the belly large, swagging, and swelling 
out ; the legs short; its pace laborious and crawling ; its 
retreat gloomy and filthy: in short, its general appearance 
such as to strike with disgust and horror.” The whole of 
his account teems with expressions of the same kind; and 
it would be difficult to find a more striking instance of the 
influence of prejudice in the mind of any professed admirer 
of nature, or a more unpleasing example of partial misre- 
presentation. The true lover of Nature, on the contrary, 
who, in the simplicity and singleness of heart which always 
belongs to that character, seeks even in the less attractive 
of her works for those proofs of wisdom and beneficence 
by which they are all characterised, will rather find in the 
