Reptiles. 



6607 



T cannot see that Mr. Bell's belief that the edible frogs being 

 <c indigenous to this country rests on irrefragable testimony " is suffi- 

 ciently securely founded. 



Granting that Mr. Thurnall's discovery at Foulmire makes it in the 

 highest degree probable that the recollections of Mr. Bell's father (so 

 long ago made known to his son), of frogs that he considered of a dif- 

 ferent species from the common frog, and which were called, in the 

 neighbourhood of Foulmire, " Whaddon Organs," referred to the frogs 

 who were progenitors of those edible frogs of Mr. Thurnall's dis- 

 covering, nevertheless it scarcely seems a necessary consequence of 

 the edible frog being at Foulmire " nearly a hundred years ago " that 

 it was truly indigenous to Britain. 



There are quadrupeds, fishes, mollusks, and plants believed to have 

 been introduced to this country far more than a hundred years ago, 

 and now naturalized and wild : why may not an amphibious creature 

 have been so introduced by man, and, as in many other cases, no 

 record been kept of its introduction ? This would particularly be 

 likely to happen in the case of a being of some use to man. How 

 many French families of the upper classes, who value these frogs 

 highly, have from time to time settled in England ! 



How a supposed new species of frog may have been brought into a 

 country and turned out in numbers, without there being any desire 

 on the part of the introducer to make the fact known, Mr. Newton's 

 account of Mr. Burney's experiments is sufficient proof, — his turning 

 out in England two hundred edible frogs and a great quantity of their 

 spawn, in 1837, about two years before the publication of the first 

 edition of Mr. Bell's £ History of British Reptiles,' and thirteen hun- 

 dred individuals in 1842, the year before Mr. Thurnall's discovery at 

 Foulmire, and nevertheless for the twenty-two years subsequent to 

 Mr. Burney's first bringing over the frogs his avoiding making his 

 experiments in any way public, though indeed they became known, 

 sooner or later, to Mr. John Henry Gurney, who first communicated 

 them to Mr. Newton. 



It is rather remarkable that Mr. Bell, in the first edition of his 

 work on British Reptiles, should so clearly indicate his disbelief in 

 the edible frog as a British species (vide Hist. Brit. Rept, 1st ed., 

 art. " Scottish Frog"), though he figures, for the benefit of the Scot- 

 tish naturalists, a specimen of the edible frog sent to him from France 

 by M. Bibron (p. 104). For it would hence appear that his father's 

 account of the " Whaddon Organs," which had been told to him " as 



