96 OUR REPTILES. 



portant part. Full of meaning is the myth of 

 the Frogs of Latona ; also the fable of their 

 election of a king. ^Esop related it to the 

 Athenians,, when Pisistratus had usurped the 

 government; and very lately its influence was 

 put to the test by working it up into a political 

 drama. Aristophanes had already brought the 

 Frog people on the stage, just as two thousand 

 years later it appears to have furnished one of 

 the greatest German satirists with a welcome 

 subject. Unfortunately, of Fischart's "Frosch- 

 gosch " the name alone is preserved ; another 

 poem, however, which, in the heroic style of the 

 Homerian epic, sings the battle between the 

 Frogs and Mice, affords us a compensation. I 

 mean the " Batrachomyomachia," and the new 

 version of it by Rollenhagen. Appearing as it 

 did towards the end of the sixteenth century, 

 " Froschmausler " was long, and very justly, a 

 favourite book of Protestant Germany. In 1787, 

 when Prussian troops marched into insurrec- 

 tionary Holland, a third frog epic appeared, as 

 if to show how inexhaustible the subject was. 

 Thus has this race of animals won for itself an 

 inalienable place in poesy ; and, beginning with 

 fable and with riddles, runs through the whole 

 of song. 



The Koran relates of Mohammed that he 

 knew how to appreciate these despised animals, 



