FROGS. 53 



from their breeding ponds. In this account he at once sub- 

 verts that foolish opinion of their 

 dropping from the clouds in rain ; 

 showing that it is from the grateful 

 coolness and moisture of those show- 

 ers that they are tempted to set out 

 on their travels, which they defer 

 till those fall.* Frogs are as yet in 

 their tadpole state ; but, in a few weeks, 

 our lanes, paths, and fields, will swarm for a few days with 

 myriads of those emigrants, no larger than my little finger nail. 

 Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of the method and 

 situation in which the male impregnates the spawn of the female. 

 How wonderful is the economy of Providence with regard to the 

 limbs of so vile a reptile ! While it is an aquatic it has a fish-like 

 tail, and no legs : as soon as the legs sprout, the tail drops off as 

 useless, and the animal betakes itself to the land ! 



Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances^ that the 

 rana arborea is an English reptile ; it abounds in Germany and 

 Switzerland.f 



It is to be remembered that the salamandra aquatica of Ray 

 (the water-newt or eft) will frequently bite at the angler's bait, 

 and is often caught on his hook. I used to take it for granted 

 that the salamandra aquatica was hatched, lived, and died, in 

 the water. But John EUis, Esq., F. R. S. (the coraUine Ellis) as- 



* There are many well-authenticated instances of the actual fact, however, strange as it may 

 seem, of tadpoles, and small frogs, and the young fry of fishes being precipitated in considerable 

 number* from above, and some of them, too, in situations considerably distant from any place 

 where they could have been bred. Mr. Loudon records one in the Magazine of Natural History, 

 vol. ii., p. 103. "When at Rouen," he relates, " in September, 1828, 1 was assured by an English 

 family, resident there, that, during a heavy thunder shower, accompanied by violent wind, and 

 almost midnight darkness, an innumerable multitude of young frogs fell on and around the 

 house. The roof, the window-sills, and the gravel walks were covered with them. They were 

 very small, but perfectly formed ; all dead. The most obvious way," he continues, " of account- 

 ing for this phenomenon is by supposing the water and frogs of some adjacent ponds to have 

 been taken up by wind in a sort of whirl or tornado." The following is from a number of the 

 Belfast Chronicle: "As two gentlemen were sitting conversing on a causey pillar, near Bushmills, 

 they were very much surprised by the occurrence of a heavy shower of frogs, half formed, falling 

 in all directions, some of which have been preserved in spirits, and are now exhibited to the 

 curious by the two resident apothecaries in Bushmills." Capt. Brown relates an instance of a 

 shower of young herrings falling in Kinross-shire, many of which were picked up in the fields 

 around Loch Leven by persons of his acquaintance. Numerous other similar cases are recorded 

 in different numbers of the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal- ED. 



t This beautiful little species is not British, though it occurs in Normandy. It pertains to 

 the genus hyla- Another member of the genus rana, however, or true frog, has been discovered 

 in Forfarshire by Mr. Don, and since near Edinburgh by Dr. Stark. It has been supposed by 

 some to be identical with the R. escul.enta t or edible frog of the continent, a species very common 

 in the south of Europe. "That they are not," observes the Rev. L. Jenyns, " simple varieties of 



