510 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
states, in a paper read before the Warrington Field Club 
in November 1887, that he has counted from 1500 to 
2500 in a cluster, and considers 2000 about the average. In 
France, however, M. Héron-Royer has found mueh larger 
numbers; he records 2856, 3537, and 4005 (Bull. Soe. Zool. 
France, i1i., 1878, p. 122). 
At a season of the year, and in circumstances when so 
many creatures assume gayer tints and special ornamenta- 
tion, I have often remarked the dingy and flabby appear- 
ance of the Frog, compared with his. brighter eolour and 
markings, and altogether more attractive aspect, when 
leading a more terrestrial life later in the year. I have also 
been struck by the suddenness with which they disappear 
for a time immediately after spawning. Visiting one of the 
ponds on the Braid Hills in the middle of March, numbers 
were to be seen—some of them in pairs; a few days later 
the spawn had been deposited, and many of the frogs them- 
selves were still on the spot croaking loudly, but they 
appeared to be all males; in another week a single example 
was all that could be discovered. 
The colour and markings of the Frog vary greatly; so does 
the size. It has long been known, as Mr Boulenger remarks 
in a recent number of Fhe Annals of Scottish Natural History, 
1893, p. 202, that the Common Frog grows to a large size in 
Scotland, and occasionally assumes so peculiar a physiognomy 
as to have been described as a distinct species, Rana scotica, 
by Bell. The Rana esculenta, of Don’s list of Forfarshire 
Animals (Headrick’s “ Agriculture of Angus,” 1813, Appen- 
dix, p. 45), is supposed to have been nothing more than this 
variety of the Common Frog; and in 1833 Dr Stark 
exhibited, at a meeting of the Zoological Society in London, 
a skeleton of this variety as that “of the Edible Frog, Rana 
esculenta (Linn.), and stated that the species is found in the 
neighbourhood of Edinburgh, whence his specimen was 
obtained.” In the spring of 1848 Wolley supplied Professor 
1J am indebted to Mr Boulenger for this reference ; also for drawing my 
attention to a number of other books and papers bearing on the life-histories 
of our Batrachians, among them being Résel’s Historia Naturalis Ranarum 
Nostratium, 1758, which contains the most beautiful coloured illustrations 
of the present species I have yet seen. 
