116 BUFONIDJl. 



emblem of all that is malicious and hateful in the human 

 character, it is placed under universal ban, and treated 

 as an outlaw both by man and boy throughout the coun- 

 try. Should I be able, by the following history of its 

 habits and manners, to shew that it is, on the contrary, 

 highly useful, perfectly harmless, inoffensive, and even 

 timid, and susceptible of no inconsiderable degree of dis- 

 criminating attachment to those who treat it with kind- 

 ness, it is hoped that some few individuals may be thus 

 rescued from those barbarous acts of cruelty to which the 

 species is almost everywhere subjected. The mistaken 

 notions to which I have alluded are indeed pardonable in 

 the ignorant and uneducated ; but that one professing to 

 be an observer and an admirer of the works of nature, 

 should have suffered his prejudices to dictate such a violent 

 and false philippic against this harmless creature, as the 

 following passage from Pennant, is not easily to be ac- 

 counted for, and scarcely to be forgiven : 



He calls it " the most deformed and hideous of all ani- 

 mals ; the body broad ; the back flat, and covered with a 

 pimply dusky hide ; the belly large, swagging, and swelling 

 out ; the legs short ; its pace laborious and crawling ; its 

 retreat gloomy and filthy : in short, its general appearance 

 such as to strike with disgust and horror." The whole of 

 his account teems with expressions of the same kind ; and 

 it would be difficult to find a more striking instance of the 

 influence of prejudice in the mind of any professed admirer 

 of nature, or a more unpleasing example of partial misre- 

 presentation. The true lover of Nature, on the contrary, 

 who, in the simplicity and singleness of heart which always 

 belongs to that character, seeks even in the less attractive 

 of her works for those proofs of wisdom and beneficence 

 by which they are all characterised, will rather find in the 



