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CHAPTER VIII. 



THE ANCIENT ORDER OF BATRACHIANS. 



" The swimming-frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt, and the 

 water." 



THE Batrachians are not by any means such strangers as some 

 people may imagine. The reader who has forgotten his Greek, 

 or who never had any Greek to forget, may fail to recognize 

 them, but they have amongst them many old familiar faces for 

 all that. 



Let nobody therefore run away with the notion that this 

 same ancient order is some old, broken-up, dead-and-gone fra- 

 ternity, similar to those illustrious orders of Odd Fellows, Green 

 Foresters, Ancient Druids, and the like, which still find coun- 

 tenance and support amongst the children of men. The idea is 

 altogether beside the mark. The Batrachians do not belong to 

 the human family at all. They are a race, not of men, but of 

 reptiles, the best known members of the order being the "small 

 deer " enumerated above, from that extraordinary list of dainties 

 which the banished Edgar palms off upon his father as his " food 

 for seven long year." 



No one will dispute that these little fellows are for the most 

 part familiar enough ; and yet how far removed are they from 

 being familiar friends ! The truth is, the Batrachians have but 

 few admirers. They labour under that direst of misfortunes a 

 bad name. Innocent and inoffensive, and doing no small amount 

 of good iu their way, they are yet misrepresented and maligned, 

 their good qualities denied, and bad qualities from which they 

 are wholly exempt, obstinately laid to their charge. There is 

 perhaps hardly another race of creatures in existence which is 

 BO unanimously hated, and hunted to death, as this poor obscure 

 race of reptiles. It matters not that Homer has sung of their 

 exploits, that Aristophanes lias embellished them with his wit, 

 that their history is one of the most wonderful on record, no- 



