COMMON FROG. 



91 



too, that the sex of the Frog is incidentally and unwit- 

 tingly furnished by the writer by his mention of the " swoln 

 cheeks," which he attributes to the creature's malice against 

 his formidable enemy. 



I have often heard my father relate an instance of a similar 

 fact, though with somewhat more adherence to the simple 

 truth of the case. As he was walking in the spring on the 

 banks of a large piece of water at Wimpole, the seat of Lord 

 Hardwicke, he observed a large pike swimming in a very slug- 

 gish manner near the surface of the water, having two dark- 

 coloured patches on the side, which he thought must be occa- 

 sioned by disease. A few days afterwards he saw the same 

 pike floating dead upon the surface of the water, and having 

 drawn it to land by means of a stick, he found that the dark- 

 coloured masses, which he had observed on the former occa- 

 sion, were two living Frogs, still attached to the fish, and 

 that so firmly, that it required some force to push them off 

 with the stick. There can be no doubt that the diseased 

 state of the pike facilitated the approach and adhesion of the 

 Frogs, to which they were primarily impelled by the sexual 

 instinct before mentioned. 



During the cohesion of the two sexes, then, the female 

 commences the deposition of the spawn, which is fecundated 

 during its passage. When first expelled it consists of nu- 

 merous small opake globular bodies, enveloped in a small 

 glairy, or glutinous mass. This latter substance soon absorbs 

 a large quantity of water, and, in the course of an hour or 

 two, each becomes not less than a quarter of an inch in dia- 

 meter. The consequence of this augmentation in the bulk of 

 the transparent mass, surrounding each embryo, is, that all 

 the latter are removed from each other by a whole diameter 

 of each globe ; and they appear like black dots regularly dis- 

 tributed throughout a large mass of transparent jelly. 



The deposit of the eggs takes place at the bottom of the 



