VOCAL PERFORMANCES, 183 



cousin, the edible Frog, has a much more sonorous voice, and in 

 our fen counties where they occur, have earned the names oi 

 "Whaddon Organs and Cambridgeshire Nightingales. In France, 

 where, of course, cliis Frog is abundant, it was a common custom 

 up to the time of the first revolution, for the menials belonging 

 to the great castles of the nobility, to lash the water in the 

 ditches and moats every morning, in order to quiet the Frogs and 

 keep them from disturbing my lord and lady. The Tree-Frogs 

 litter a shrill treble note ; and it is probably to one of this 

 kind that Mr. Wallace refers in his " Travels on the Amazon,'' 

 which had, he says, such an agreeable whistle, that could it 

 have been brought into civilized society, it would probably have 

 had as many admirers as the singing mouse, or the still more 

 marvellous whistling oyster described by " Punch." Mr. Darwin 

 mentions one of these American Tree-Frogs, which, he says, sits 

 on a blade of grass about an inch above the surface of the water, 

 and sends forth a pleasing chirp, several of them sometimes 

 getting together and singing in harmony in different notes. At 

 the vocal antipodes of the Tree-Frog, is the Bull-Frog, whose 

 deep hollow voice resembles the bellowing of a bull. In Germany 

 there is the Laughing-Toad, a dapper sort of creature that can 

 leap like a Frog, and utters a noise like that of a man laughing 

 But for this variety of the croak, the most famous of the race is' 

 the Jocular Toad of the desert shores of the Caspian and the 

 Volga, which appears, of an evening, to become so exceedingly 

 hilarious, that the traveller in those solitary regions is apt to 

 fancy he has come unawares upon a company of men and women 

 laughing heartily together, and is not a little surprised to find 

 that the boisterous merriment proceeds from a number of huge 

 Toads celebrating their nuptial rites. 



We have no space now to discuss at proper length the great 

 " toad-in-a-hole " question, which has recently been revived by 

 Mr. Gosse, and which has long attracted the attention of the 

 curious. Is it true that Toads and Frogs have been found alive 

 enclosed within masses of stone and clay, or similar substances, 

 where they have been wholly cut off from air and food, and im- 

 mured for perhaps thousands of years ? That is the question ; 

 and, in spite of all alleged discoveries to the contrary, we must 

 persist in believing that the question answers itself. The thing 

 is impossible. No doubt many remarkable cases have occurred 



