250 ANIMAL FOOD EESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



shall all probably acknowledge some day when we have 

 sufficiently overcome our insular prejudice about him." 



At Paris there is a regular market held once a week 

 in the Rue Geoffroy St. Hilaire for the sale of this 

 Batrachian. The vendors bring their merchandise in 

 large casks pierced with holes, in which the frogs are 

 packed in hundreds in wet moss. They are sold, if of 

 good size, at 75 to 85 francs the hundred, a good 

 price for this wretched animal. Many are bought by 

 gardeners, as they are great destroyers of insects. 



In France efforts are being made to prevent cruelty in 

 supplying this table delicacy. The Socidtd Protectrice 

 des Animaux has issued a strong protest against the 

 present mode of providing frogs for the dinner table in 

 France. It appears that the poor creatures when caught, 

 have the upper part of their legs, or edible portion of 

 their bodies, ruthlessly cut oft' with a pair of shears. 

 The frogs in their mutilated state being useless, they are 

 thrown aside. Numbers of them are stated to have been 

 found eight or ten daysj after their mutilation crawling 

 about on their forelegs in a pitiable condition. The 

 Society, therefore, recommends that some plan of killing 

 them in the first place should be adopted. 



Many of the frogs brought to the markets in Paris are 

 caught in the stagnant waters round Montmorenci, in the 

 Bois de Vincennes, Bois de Boulogne, etc. The people 

 employed in this traffic separate the hind quarters and 

 legs of the frogs from the body, denude them of their 

 skin, arrange them on skewers, as larks are done in this 

 country, and then bring them in that state to market. 

 In seeking for frogs, these dealers often meet with toads, 

 which they do not reject, but prepare them in the same 

 way as they would froqs; and, as it is impossible to de- 

 termine whether the hind quarters of these creatures, 

 after the skin is stripped off, belong to frogs or toads, it 

 continually happens that great- numbers of the supposed 

 frogs sold in Paris for food are actually toads. 



" The exportation of frogs from Belgium to France," 

 says the ^cho du Luxembourg, " has developed consider- 



