CHAP. VIII.] THE FOURTH DAY. 197 



a small one, is by Topsell taken to be venomous ; and so is 

 the padock or frog-padock, which usually keeps or breeds on 

 the land, and is very large, and bony, and big, especially the 

 she-frog of that kind ; yet these will sometimes come into the 

 water, but it is not often ; and the land-frogs are some of 

 them observed by him, to breed by laying eggs j 1 and others 

 to breed of the slime and dust of the earth, and that in winter 

 they turn to slime again, and that the next summer that 

 very slime returns to be a living creature ; this is the opinion 

 of Pliny. And Cardanus 2 undertakes to give a reason for 

 the raining of frogs ; 3 but if it were in my power, it should 

 rain none but water-frogs, for those I think are not 

 venomous, especially the right water-frog, which, about 

 [February or March, breeds in ditches by slime, and blackish 

 eggs in that slime : about which time of breeding, the he and 

 she-frogs are observed to use divers summersaults, and to 

 croak and make a noise, which the land-frog or padock-frog, 

 never does. 



Now of these water-frogs, if you intend to fish with a 

 frog for a pike, you are to choose the yellowest that you can 

 get, for that the pike ever likes best. And thus use your 

 frog, that he may continue long alive. 



1 All frogs deposit their spawn in the water. ED. 



2 In his 19th Book "De Subtilitate." Hieronymus Cardanus was an 

 Italian physician, naturalist, and astrologer, well known by his numerous 

 writings : he died at Rome, 1576. He is said to have foretold the day of 

 his death, and that, when it approached, he suffered himself to die of 

 hunger to preserve his reputation. He had been in England, and wrote a 

 character of our Edward VI. H. 



3 There are many well attested accounts of the raining of frogs : but 

 Mr. Ray rejects them as utterly false and ridiculous ; and demonstrates the 

 impossibility of their production in any such manner. See his "Wisdom of 

 God in the Creation," 310. AlsoDerham's "Phys. Theol." 344. H. It is, 

 therefore, with considerable diffidence, I relate the following fact : I had 

 a house, some years ago, at Fulham, with a garden of about half an acre 

 behind the house, which was surrounded by a high wall. I caused 

 the whole of the garden to be deeply trenched, and when this had been 

 done, there was a long and violent rain, which lasted some days. On going 

 into the garden when the rain ceased, I found myriads of very small frogs 

 crawling and hopping about. Now there was only a common pump in the 

 garden, which was covered over. The soil of the garden was a sandy 

 loam ; of course no spawn could have vivified in it, especially after the deep 

 trenching. Whence then did these frogs come ? ED. 



