

Amphibia 105 



overlays the clay. Another place of occurrence is Tadlow on 

 the Bedford Road. 



Rana temporaria, the Common or Grass-frog, is found 

 throughout the county. In the vicinity of Cambridge it is be- 

 coming decidedly rarer owing to the incessant demand for this 

 martyr of science. Within the last twenty years the price 

 has risen from one half-penny to a penny per piece, and the 

 purveyors have to extend their raids further and further 

 a-field. 



Rana esculenta, the Edible or Water-frog. The Fens of 

 Cambridgeshire and Norfolk seein to be the only districts 

 in England which may rightly claim this otherwise conti- 

 nental species as indigenous. Bell (British Reptiles, 2nd ed. 

 1894, p. 110) records that his father, who was a native of 

 Cambridgeshire, had noticed the presence of these frogs, many 

 years before the publication of the book cited, at Whaddon 

 and Foulmire : they were known from their loud croak 

 as "Whaddon organs" and "Dutch nightingales." But the 

 species was not officially discovered until September, 1843, 

 when Mr Charles Thurnall, of Duxford, caught and sent two 

 specimens to the British Museum. In the following summer 

 more were caught in the same Foulmire Mere, and some of 

 these are preserved in the Museum of Zoology at Cambridge. 

 Next, the species was rediscovered in Norfolk, between 

 Thetford and Scoulton, where it is very abundant, and from 

 inquiries made by Lord Walsingham must have existed at 

 least since about 1820. Occasionally a specimen is caught 

 in some other locality ; for instance, in the Fens of Foulden, 

 Norfolk; I have heard them in the pairing season of 1883 on 

 Hickling Broad ; and in the summer of 1901 one fine male 

 was found amongst a number of Grass-frogs which had been 

 caught between Chesterton and Milton for the Physiological 

 Laboratory. 



The interesting question is, of course, whether these Water- 

 frogs have been introduced by man, or whether they are the 

 last lingering descendants of indigenous Britishers, survivors 



