THE FROG. 177 



Icon rested its two fore paws on the edge of it, the two hind ones 

 resting on my other hand. It stood upright while drinking, hold- 

 ing its head up like a fowl. By flinging its tongue out of its mouth, 

 the length of its body, and instantaneously catching the fly, it would 

 go back like a spring. They will drink mutton broth. 



* When in Italy, a gentleman, a professor of natural history, had 

 two sent him from the coast of Barbary, but they did not live long. 

 He dissected them, and his idea on the change of color is, that he 

 found they had four skins extremely fine, which occasioned the 

 different colors. It may be so, but of this I am positively certain, 

 whatever it may proceed from, they have their different colors pe- 

 culiar, distinct, and independent of each other, and of themselves.' 

 He adds, in another place, that the chameleons are very inveterate 

 towards their own kind, biting off each others tails and legs, if shut 

 up in the same cage. 



THE FROG. 



THE frog is in itself a very harmless animal, but to most people, 

 who use it not as an article of food, exceedingly loathsome. Its 

 employment by the Almighty in one of the plagues of Egypt, was 

 characterized by the most striking wisdom. God, with equal ease, 

 says Dr. Adam Clarke, could have brought crocodiles, bears, lions, 

 or tigers, to have punished these people. But, had he used any of 

 these formidable animals, the effect would have appeared so com- 

 mensurate to the cause, that the hand of God might have been for- 

 gotten in the punishment ; and the people would have been exas- 

 perated, without being humbled. In the present instance, he show- 

 ed the greatness of his power, by making an animal, devoid of eve- 

 ry evil quality, the means of a terrible affliction to his enemies. 

 How easy is it, both to the justice and mercy of God, to destroy or 

 save by means of the most despicable and insignificant of instru- 

 ments ! Though he is the Lord of Hosts, he has no need of power- 

 ful armies, the ministry of angels, or the thunderbolts of justice, to 

 punish a sinner, or a sinful nation ; the/rog or the/y, in his hands, 

 is a sufficient instrument of vengeance. 



To the reason here assigned for the choice of so insignificant an 

 animal, we may add another; namely, that as the frog waa in 

 Egypt an emblem of Osiris, or the Sun, the first object of idolatrous 

 worship to the nations of the East, its employ ment on such an oc- 

 casion was eminently adapted to convince them of the absurdity of 

 their superstitious system. 



These vengeful reptiles, says Paxton, were produced in the 

 streams of the Nile, and in the lakes which were supplied from its 



