44 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



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 an 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. 2^^) concerning 

 the migration of frogs from their breeding ponds. In this 

 account he at once subverts that fooHsh opinion of their 

 dropping from the clouds in rain ; showing 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 are as yet in their tadpole 

 state; but in a few weeks, our lanes, paths, fields, will 

 swarm for a few days with myriads of these emigrants, no 

 larger than my little finger nail. Swammerdam gives a 

 most accurate account of the method and situation in which 

 the male impregnates the spawn of the female. How 

 wonderful is the oeconomy of Providence with regard to the 

 limbs of so vile a reptile ! While it is aquatic it has a fish- 

 like tail, and no legs : as soon as the legs sprout, the tail 

 drops off as useless, and the animal betakes itself to the land ! 



Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances 

 that the rana arborea is an English reptile ; it abounds in 

 Germany and Switzerland. 



