^378 



LETTER Ll'X. 



to fastidious delicacy, the great Author of Nature has 

 undoubtedly created them for a wise and good pur- 

 pose. We are too. little acquainted with their habits, 

 propensities, and general economy, to be fully able 

 to estimate their utility; but their importance in thfc 

 scale of being is well known to him who has made- 

 nothing in vain. 



The frog and the toad are universally known; and 

 the frequent opportunities which evory one has of 

 viewing them, preclude the necessity of description. 

 Their history, however, is sufficiently curious, if the 

 conciseness of our plan would admit of minute inves- 

 tigation. 



In their figure, these two animals have a consider- 

 able resemblance, but custom and prejudice have 

 taught us to make a very different estimate of their 

 properties : the first is considered as perfectly harm- 

 less, while the latter is supposed to be, poisonous. In 

 this respect, the toad has been treated with great in- 

 justice. It is a torpid harmless animal, that parses 

 the greatest part of the winter in sleep. 



The erroneous opinion of toads containing and 

 ejecting poison, has caused many cruelties to be ex- 

 ercised upon this harmless, and undoubtedly useful 

 tribe. Toads have been inhumanly treated, merely 

 because they are ugly ; and frogs hare been abused 

 because they are like them. But, my dear Sir, we 

 are to observe, that our ideas of beauty and deformity, 

 of which some arise from natural antipathies im plank- 

 ed in us for wise and good purposes, and others from. 

 custom and caprice, are of a relative nature, and pe- 

 culiar to ourselves. None of these relative distinc- 

 tions of great and small, beautiful or ugly, exist 

 in the all-comprising view of the Creator of the uni- 

 verse : in his eyes the toad is as pleasing an-object as 

 the canary-bird or the bull-finch. 



THJ? CROCODILE 



is one of the most terrible and mischievous anini:\K 

 not only of the lizard kind, but also of all those which 

 nature has produced ; fortunately for us, however, it 

 is placed at a happy distance from Europe, an] only 



