Class III. COMMON FROG. 15 



B§exexs%, xoci% t koo,%, 

 B§eK£xs%, x.oa%, xox%, 

 Ai^voua, k^vujv tskvoc. * 



Brekekex, coax, coax, 

 Brekekex, coax, coax, 

 The offspring of the pools and fountains. 



Yet there is a time of year when they become Periodical 

 mute, neither croaking or opening their mouths 

 for a whole month : this happens in the hot sea- 

 son, and that is in many places known to the 

 country people by the name of the Paddock 

 Moon. Morton \ endeavours to find a rea- 

 son for their silence, but tho' his facts are true, 

 he is unfortunate in his philosophy. Frogs are 

 certainly endued (as he well observed) with a 

 power of living a certain time under water with- 

 out respiration, which is owing to their lungs 

 being composed of a series of bladders : but he 

 mistakes the nature of air, when he affirms that 

 they receive a quantity of cool air, and dare not 

 open their mouths for a month, from a dread of 

 admitting a warmer into their lungs. It is hardly 

 necessary to say, that in whatever state the air 

 was received, it would become vitiated in a certain 

 time. We must leave the fact to be accounted 

 for by farther experiments; but from what 

 we do know, we may partly vindicate Theo- 



* Comedy of the Frogs. f Hist. Northampt. 441. 



