BRUSSELS. 27.5 



called the Altesse. The Heine Claude, or our green-gage, 

 was common, and of excellent quality. Gurkins or small 

 cucumbers were plentiful. The quantities of roasted apples 

 and pears exposed for sale in the market, or hawked 

 through the streets, at first surprised us ; but we learned 

 that the common people use them very much as an article 

 of diet. 



Frog-Market 



In a lane hard by the green and fruit stalls, we fell in 

 with the frog-market, which was a novelty to us. The 

 animals are brought alive in pails and cans, and are sold 

 by tale. The frog-women are arranged on forms like the 

 oyster-wives in the Edinburgh fish-market ; and, like 

 them, they prepare the article for the purchaser on the 

 spot: as the oyster-woman dexterously opens the shells 

 with her gulley, the frog-woman shews no less adroitness, 

 though more barbarity, in the exercise of her scissors: 

 with these she clips off the hind limbs (being the only 

 parts used), flaying them at the same time with great rapi- 

 dity, and sticking them on wooden skewers. Many hun- 

 dreds of the bodies of the frogs, thus cruelly mangled, 

 were crawling in the kennel, or lying in heaps, till they 

 should be carried off in the dust-carts. 



We may mention, that the species thus used as food 

 (Rana esculenta) has never been observed by us as a na- 

 tive of Scotland, though it is marked, in natural history 

 works, as a British species. It is generally larger, and 

 more arched on the back, than our common frog (R. tem- 

 poraria) ; and the colour is rather green, while ours is near- 

 ly yellow. We noticed, however, many specimens, per- 

 haps males, marked longitudinally over the back with three 

 faint yellow lines. 



s2 



