44 SHOWERS OF FROGS. 



yet I never saw, or read of toads being observed in the same 

 situation. It is strange that the matter with regard to the 

 venom of toads has not been yet settled. That they are not 

 noxious to some animals is plain ; for ducks, buzzards, owls, 

 stone-curlews, and snakes, eat them, to my knowledge, with 

 impunity. And I well remember the time, but was not eye- 

 witness to the fact, (though numbers of persons were,) when 

 a quack, at this village, ate a toad to make the country people 

 stare : afterwards he drank oil. 



I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, 

 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 extensive 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 ; shewing, 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 



* The following paragraph is extracted from a late number of the 

 Belfast Chronicle: " As two gentlemen were sitting conversing on a 

 causey pillar, near Bushmills, they were very much surprised by an 

 unusually heavy shower of frogs, half formed, falling in all directions ; 

 some of which are preserved in spirits of wine, and are now exhibited 

 to the curious by the two resident apothecaries in Bushmills." 



Mr London says, " When at Rouen, in September, 1828, I was 

 assured by an English family, resident there, that, during a very 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 ; and 

 the next day being excessively hot, they were dried up to so many points, 

 or pills, about the size of the heads of pins. The most obvious way of 

 accounting 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." Mag. of Nat. Hist. ii. p. 103. 



We have records of this kind, in all ages ; and I have selected the above 



