94 APPENDIX: NO. LX. 
DX. 
Ts poe Episite FroG a true Native or Britain ? ” 
[‘ Zoologist,’ xvii. (1859) pp. 6606-6609. | 
Since Mr. Alfred Newton, in his important communication (Zool. 
6540) 1, has introduced my name as having formerly proposed the 
question whether the Edible Frog is a true native of Britain, and 
as Mr. Bell’s latest remarks on the subject (Zool. 6565) are before 
me, I venture to send you what seems to me fairly to be said upon 
the subject. 
I cannot see that Mr. Bell’s belief that the Edible Frogs being 
“indigenous to this country rests on irrefragable testimony” 1s 
sufficiently well founded. 
Granting that Mr. Thurnall’s discovery at Foulmire makes it in 
the highest degree probable that the recollections of Mr. Bell’s 
father’ (so long ago made kuown to his son) of Frogs that he 
considered of a different species from the Common Frog, and which 
were called in the neighbourhocd of Foulmire “ Whaddon Organs,” 
referred to the Frogs who were progenitors of these Edible Frogs of 
Mr. Thurnall’s discovering, nevertheless it scarcely seems a necessary 
consequence of the Edible Frog being at Foulmire “ nearly a 
hundred years ago”’ that it was truly indigenous to Britain. 
There are quadrupeds, fishes, mollusks, and plants believed to have 
been introduced to this country far more than a hundred years ago, 
and now naturalised and wild: why may not an amphibious creature 
have been so introduced by man, and, as in many other cases, no 
record been kept of its introduction? This would particularly be 
likely to happen in the case of a being of some use to man. How 
many French families of the upper classes, who value these Frogs 
highly, have from time to time settled in England ! . 
How a supposed new species of Frog may have been brought into 
1 (I had then recorded the discovery, in 1858, by my brother Edward and 
myself, of a colony of Rana esculenta in Norfolk, which we could not doubt were 
descendants of the 500 Frogs of that species liberated, between 1837 and 1842, in 
that county by Mr. George Berney, as I had recently heard from him ; but, though 
referring to Mr. Wolley’s former enquiry (see No. XIX.), I did not presume to say 
how far it was answered by the facts I had brought forward. My statements 
produced a brief note from Professor Bell, in which, however, he merely repeated 
as “irrefragable testimony” what he had already said in the second edition of 
his ‘British Reptiles, without adducing any new facts. I think that now all 
admit Mr. Wolley’s scepticism to have been amply justified, and 1 may add that, 
from conversation with Mr. Thurnall, I came to the conclusion that ke himself 
suspected, if indeed he did not know, that the species had been* introduced at 
Foulmire, though when or by whom this was done it is impossible to say. I never 
heard of anyone but himself and Mr. Bond obtaining specimens there. 
I may further add that in 1876 Lord Walsingham and I discovered another 
colony in Norfolk, and examples have since been taken in several localities in that 
county. Mr. Boulenger at first douhted whether they could be descended from 
Mr. Berney’s colonists, for they seemed to be of Italian and not French or Belgian 
race, but I understand this objection is now wholly withdrawn.—Eb. | 
