168 SHOWERS OF FBOGS. 



Mr. Bell placed in a large glass globe of water several Tadpoles 

 nearly approaching their final change, and he observed that, as 

 surely as one of them acquired its limbs, it would soon afterwards 

 be found dead at the bottom of the water, and the other Tadpoles 

 feeding upon it. This took place with all of them successively, 

 excepting the last, which not being able, or perhaps disposed, to 

 eat himself, lived to complete his change, and doubtless grew fat 

 upon the rum of his fellows. 



One of the popular errors which have come down to us from 

 the remotest times, and one which still has vitality enough to 

 secure an occasional paragraph in its support in provincial news- 

 papers, is the belief in showers of Frogs. The origin of this 

 belief is no doubt to be found in the extraordinary abundance in 

 which young Frogs, just after the completion of their transforma- 

 tion from the Tadpole state, and especially after rain, are seen in 

 the act of migrating from the pond or swamp in which they 

 commenced their career, into the surrounding districts. Enor- 

 mous numbers of these tiny creatures are sometimes to be met 

 with in this manner, the ground being at times literally covered 

 with them over a considerable area ; and as this curious spectacle 

 is most frequently observed after heavy showers, accompanied, as 

 such showers occasionally are about the middle of the year, by 

 thunder and lightning, it is not at all extraordinary that the 

 notion should have arisen that the animals in question came from 

 the clouds. Incidental allusions to this idea are to be found in 

 many of the writers of antiquity ; and Aristotle goes so far as to 

 assert that the Frogs so seen are a peculiar sort, which he terms 

 dioTTtTTjs, " sent by Jupiter." 



In later times, when philosophers were more ambitious of ac- 

 counting for the supposed facts of popular belief than of testing 

 their accuracy, a variety of ingenious reasons were assigned for 

 the phenomenon. The celebrated Cardan, in his book " De Subtili- 

 tate," maintained that it was the violence of the wind which 

 carried the Frogs from the tops of the mountains and bore them 

 to the plains. Another idea was, that the eggs of the Frog were 

 taken up by the winds, and, being hatched in mid-air, the young 

 Frogs fell to the ground ; but against this theory, Scaliger urged 

 very conclusive objections, that the eggs of the Frog produce, not 

 perfectly formed Frogs, but Tadpoles, which no one pretended had 

 ever come down from the clouds. 



