**2 HALF-HOURS IN THE GREEN LANES. 



have to complain of insect enemies, if they would 

 but exercise more care in the preservation and 

 increase of toads and frogs ; and establish on their 

 own domains a kind of ' local game law/ instead of 

 winking at the persecution, if not really encouraging 

 the extirpation, of their best friends !" We dis- 

 tinctly remember favouring the frog above the 

 toad, in own boyish days. We knew nothing of 

 its insect-destroying benefits, but it was an article 

 of faith with us that, " frogs made the water clean !" 

 In the winter time, the frog, like other of our 

 indigenous reptiles, hybernates in holes, &c., to be 

 revived by the warmth of the ensuing spring. 

 Not unfrequently, when the hybernatiug period is 

 drawing on, they get into queer holes into crevices 

 of trees or rocks, or down deserted coal shafts. 

 Should they get into some of the crevices which are 

 afterwards filled up, either by infiltration or by the 

 rocks closing, then they may be come across as 

 :< frogs in the solid rocks," to furnish wonderful 

 paragraphs for country newspapers ! For we may 

 dismiss at once the idea about these or any other 

 reptiles having been preserved alive since the rocks 

 were formed. Experiments have proved that hyber- 

 uating frogs are not able to live in such masses as 

 plaster of Paris more than twenty years. We know 

 that however slowly a fire burns, it will burn out in 

 time if no fresh fuel be added. And, as these 

 imprisoned frogs are slowly absorbing their own 

 tissues even when hyberrating, and there ie no 



