NOTES AND QUERIES. 809 



AMPHIBIA. 



Frog attacked by Weasel, and Toad by Hedgehog.— I was much 

 interested in Mr. Meiklejohn's account of the above, never having had 

 the good fortune to observe the same ; but I have twice come across a 

 Weasel devouring a Frog, the last occasion being two or three years ago, in 

 the month of September. I was out Partridge shooting, and on walking 

 down a field to join the other guns, I heard a commotion in a high hawthorn 

 fence. On creeping quietly up, I saw a Weasel almost at the top of the 

 fence, which was about twelve feet high, tearing a Frog to pieces. I 

 watched it unobserved for about half a minute; then it caught sight of me, 

 let drop the Frog, and bolted down into the ditch. This was a large Weasel* 

 and therefore presumably a male. My late father-in-law, some years ago, 

 when going down a hay-field of his in Lincolnshire, heard a curious noise 

 going on, for which he could not account, on the other side of the fence ; 

 he quietly got over, and found a Frog held by the hind leg by a Mouse, 

 but, not being a naturalist, he was unable to tell me what species of Mouse 

 it was. In addition to those animals mentioned in the editorial note which 

 attack the Toad, I can add another, viz. the Hedgehog. At my old home 

 iu my father's lifetime we had a large walled-in orchard adjoining the 

 garden, where we kept various reptiles, amphibia, birds, and mammals, and 

 amongst the latter were a score of Hedgehogs. We had a lot of common 

 Toads, common Frogs, and about a score each of Natterjack Toads and 

 Edible Frogs, the latter of which I had brought from the Continent. We 

 were considerably annoyed to find dead specimens of all four species lying 

 about, all of them having merely the thighs torn aud eaten. A strict 

 look-out was kept for the culprit, and one day, a message being brought 

 that the gardener wished to see me at once, I hurried down, and found 

 that he had caught Erinaceus europceus in flagrante delicto, just finishing 

 off one of my Natterjack Toads. — Oxley Grabham (Flaxton, Yorkj. 



[The editorial note to which Mr. Oxley Grabham refers relates princi- 

 pally to the carnivorous mammals which have been known to attack the 

 Frog, and to these may be added the domestic Cat, as recorded in ' The 

 Zoologist' for 1865, p. 9814. A writer iu 'Loudon's Mag. Nat. Hist.' 

 vol. iv. (1831), p. 557, states that he had " seen the mouths of Dogs swelled 

 fearfully from worrying Toads." — Ed.] 



PISCES. 

 Strange Occurrence at Durban.— It is reported from Natal that in the 

 early part of June last, at the port of Durban, hundreds of big heavy 

 Salmon were driven ashore on the back beach, it was supposed by Sharks, 

 and subsequently the fish were conveyed to town by the trolly-load. There 

 are, as is well known, no Salmon in the Indian Ocean, and it seemed 



