1875.} Notices of Books. 99 
The Common Frog. By St. Greorce Mivart, F.R.S. &c. 
London: Macmillan and Co. 
WE love the frog, not merely when daintily dressed and served 
up at table,* but when enjoying life in his native pool. It is 
pleasant to watch him on a calm sunny day, as he rests em- 
bowered amidst reeds and water lilies, with his eyes just above 
the surface, contemplating the world with full approval, and to 
hear him now and again give vent to his feelings in a gentle 
murmur, all unlike his nocturnal chorus. Our tfriend’s habit of 
rising to the surface of the water in fine weather, and of remain- 
ing at the bottom in gloom and storm, was known and noticed 
by Aristophanes, who represents him as saying— 
‘* When the sun rides in glory, and makes a bright day, 
’Midst lilies and plants of the water I stray; 
But when the sky darkens with tempest and rain, 
I sink, like a pearl, in my watery domain.” 
The barometric propensity of the frog is often utilized on the 
Continent. A tall glass jar is filled with water, and fitted up 
with a miniature flight of stairs, and in it is imprisoned a frog— 
very often the pretty green tree-frog. ‘Those who have carefully 
observed the movements of the little captive, can thence deduce 
weather forecasts quite as trustworthy as those furnished by the 
barometer. Mr. Mivart, indeed, awards to the frog the title 
‘‘the martyr of science.” ‘‘ The frog,” says he, ‘is the never- 
failing resource for the physiological experimenter. It would 
take long indeed to tell the sufferings of much-enduring frogs in 
the cause of science. What! frogs can do without their heads? 
What! their legs can do without their bodies? What! their 
arms can do without either head or trunk? What is the effect 
of the removal of their brains? How can they manage without 
their eyes, and without their ears? What effects result from all 
kinds of local imitations, from chokings, from poisonings, from 
mutilations the most varied? These are the questions again 
and again addressed to the little animal.” 
But, after all, the frog has less to fear from science than from 
brutish ignorance. 
“ Whene’er we take our walks abroad, 
How many frogs we see ”’— 
not to speak of toads and efts—which have evidently been 
wantonly tortured to death. Yet, like his nearest allies, the 
frog, far from being hurtful, is the friend of man. ‘It feeds,” 
says Mr. Mivart, ‘‘ exclusively upon living animals, such as 
insects and slugs, which it catches by suddenly throwing forwards 
beyond the mouth the free hinder part of the tongue (furnished 
* We can vouch for the fa@ that the common frog, if a shade less delicate 
than the ‘Cambridgeshire nightingale,” is yet, when properly prepared 
“‘ choicely good.” 
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