70 FROGS. — TOADS. 



maggots, whicli Airn to flesh-flies. The reptile used to come 

 fortli every evening from a hole under the garden-steps ; and 

 was taken up, after supper, on tlie table to be fed. But at 

 last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave 

 him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one 

 eye. After this accident, the creature languished for some 

 time and died. 



I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive readings 

 of the excellent account there is from Mr. Derham, in Ray'a 

 Wisdom of God in the Creation, p. 365, concerning the migra- 

 tion of frogs from their breeding-ponds. In this account he 

 at once subverts that foolish opinion, of their dropping from 

 the clouds in rain;* showing that it is from the grateful 

 coolness and moisture of those showers that they are tempted 

 to set out on their travels, M^hich they defer till those fall. 

 Progs are as yet in their tadpole state ; but in a few weeks 

 our lanes, paths, fields, will swarm for a few days with 

 myriads of those emigrants, no larger than my little finger 

 nail. Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of the 

 method and situation in which the male impregnates the 

 spawn of the female. How^ wonderful is the economy of 

 Providence with regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile ! 

 "While it is an aquatic, it has a fish-like tail and no legs ; as 

 soon as the legs sprout, the tail drops ofi* as useless, and the 

 animal betakes itself to the land ! 



Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances that 

 the rana arhorea is an English reptile : it abounds in Grermany 

 and Switzerland. 



It is to be remembered that the salamandra aquatica of 



He did not eat from the end of November till March, gradually losing his 

 appetite and gradually recovering it : he never seemed affected by cold, except 

 in the way of losing his inclination for food." — Rennie. 



* I was once witness to a swarm of very small frogs, which suddenly made 

 their appearance, after a very heavy rain, in a garden I occupied at Fulham. 

 The garden was completely surrounded by a high wall. The entrance to it 

 was through the house. It was a dry gravel ; and there was no moist place 

 in it in which the spawn of frogs could have been deposited. The etiroen 

 also had been well trenched and no frogs found in it. There also were no 

 ilrains communicating with it. 1 merely mention the fact, without pretending 

 to account for the circumstance of so many thousands of young frogs, just out 

 of the tadpole state, being found in the garden. Mr. Loudon saw the same 

 occurrence at Rouen. — Ed. 



