FROGS. 313 
in severe weather with straw. In these conservatories, even 
during a hard frost, the Frogs never become quite torpid: they 
get together in heaps one upon another instinctively, and thereby 
prevent the evaporation of their humidity, for no water is ever 
put to them.” 
Lord Clermont, in his “‘ Guide to the Quadrupeds and Reptiles 
of Europe,” says that “this Frog is found all over Europe; 
except in the British Islands; throughout the North of Asia 
to Japan, and in Egypt.” At the time these words were written 
this Batrachian was certainly an inhabitant of England, though 
in all probability it must not be considered as indigenous to this 
country, but as an importation. When the first attempt to 
naturalise the Edible Frog here was made, it is very difficult 
to say. The late Mr. Thomas Bell, in his “‘ British Reptiles,” 
published in 1849, said that his father, when a boy, eighty 
years before that date, had discovered, in Norfolk, the distinction 
of this species of Frog. Mr. George Berney has given in the 
Zoologist, p. 6539, an interesting account of his introduction 
into this country of the R. esculentu. He records that in the 
year 1837 he brought home from Paris 200 of these Frogs, and 
a quantity of their spawn. These he placed in certain ditches, 
ponds, and meadows in Norfolk. Those animals which he had 
turned in the meadows left them for the ponds. In the years 
1841 and 1842 he imported considerably over a thousand more. 
Those Frogs of which Mr. Bell’s father spoke, and which were 
known in the neighbourhood in which he lived as a boy as 
“Cambridgeshire nightingales ” and ‘‘ Whaddon Organs” may, 
like Mr. Berney’s Frogs, have been importations or descendants 
of importations. 
I believe that English-bred Edible Frogs are now difficult to 
procure. I have tried to obtain them occasionally, but have failed. 
Mr. 8. H. Miller, writing from Wisbech, in Nature, in 1874, 
referring to the Edible Frogs which, from time to time, had been 
brought into England, asks if they are dying out, for he cannot 
find any in his neighbourhood (portions of Norfolk and Cambridge- 
shire). 
I venture to think that Mr. Miller’s question may be answered 
in the affirmative, for it seems that these creatures, after being 
