TOADS FROGS. 59 



I have been informed also, from undoubted au- 

 thority, that some ladies (ladies, you will say, of 

 peculiar taste) took a fancy to a toad, which they 

 nourished, summer after summer, for many years, 

 till he grew to a monstrous size, with the maggots, 

 which turn to flesh flies. The reptile used to come 

 forth every evening from a hole under the garden 

 steps ; and was taken up, after supper, on the table 

 to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him 

 as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe 

 stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. 

 After this accident, the creature languished for 

 some time and died. 



I need not remind a gentleman of your exten- 

 sive reading of the excellent account there is from 

 Mr. Derham, in Ray's Wisdom of God, in the 

 Creation (p. 365), concerning the migration of 

 frogs from their breeding ponds. In this account, 

 he at once subverts that foolish opinion of their 

 dropping from the clouds in rain ; showing that it 

 is from the grateful coolness and moisture of those 

 showers 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, 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 Pro- 

 vidence with regard to the limbs of so vile a rep- 

 tile ! 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 ad- 



