THE EXTRAVAGANT FEOG. 



Strange as it may appear, it is nevertheless true that 

 a gourmand of a frog may sometimes have the opportunity 

 of enjoying an expensive meal at the cost of the lives of his 

 friends and near relations. In illustration of this I will 

 give an instance. An American frog dined at the expense 

 of the writer, who had to pay in money, while the near 

 relations, cousias I may call them, of Mr. Frog, paid dearly 

 by losing their lives upon the occasion. 



In England and on the Continent a dinner for one, not 

 including wine, etc., should not exceed five or six shillings, 

 but the idea of food costing this sum being swallowed, at a 

 single repast, by an epicurean frog, seems quite out of all 

 reason. 



The facts on this occasion were as follows : — Having 

 purchased about a dozen of the pretty fire-bellied toads 

 (Bombinator igneus) from Saxony at a shilling each, I 

 had them placed in a large glass case in which a happy 

 family of frogs, etc., were supposed to be enjoying each 

 other's society. This state of bliss, however, was not to 

 be shared by my Saxon friends, for whom the American 

 frog {Rana cateshiana) exhibited a great fondness, dis- 

 tending its jaws, — which reminded me of the not un- 

 frequent expression of kind mothers who say to the baby, 

 " I could eat you, you darling," but, with this difference, 

 our Yankee frog commenced immediately to swallow, " all 



200 



