146 • THE YOUNG NATUEALIST. 



portant steps in the evolution of the higher animals, by exhibiting the 

 transition, in the life -time of an individual, from the fish to the reptile. 



Of natural history it has been well said, that in its shallows a child may 

 wade, but in its depths a giant must swim. Whether, however, we wade or 

 swim in the sea of knowledge, we shall be the better and not the worse for 

 our experience. We shall be led on silently, in wondering admiration to 

 higher and juster conceptions of the governing mind of the Universe, whose 

 operations are as obvious in the organization of a worm as in the immensity 

 of the heavens. 



Perhaps no creatures have suffered more than frogs and toads from cruel 

 oppression, the child of ignorance, nursed in the cradle of superstition. 

 Before the penetrating light of science the dark image of oppression is reced- 

 ing, and with the spread of knowledge, we may hope to see a corresponding 

 growth of wisdom, and the consequent extinction of those prejudices on which 

 oppression rests. 



No British Batrachian can harm man in any way ; in fact it would be 

 difficult to find in the whole scale of creation more harmless animals than our 

 frogs and toads. The general repugnance with which they are regarded is 

 probably a legacy inherited from our superstitious ancestors, who either 

 feared or worshipped all which they did not understand, and, as the most 

 superstitious could scarcely worship a frog or toad, they have been regarded as 

 incarnations of evil. 



It will be well to emphasise the fact that the word reptile is incorrectly 

 used when applied to frogs and toads, although it was so employed by the 

 earlier naturalists, whose classifications were based on the external form rather 

 than on structural affinities. This mode of classification is most misleading, 

 for according to it, a whale would be classed as a fish, whereas it is a mam- 

 mal, suckling its young ; and again, our common blind-worm would undoubt- 

 edly be classed as a snake, whereas it is really a lizard. The most obvious 

 external character by which our British Batrachians can be distinguished 

 from reptiles, is the absence of scales, which are present in all our reptiles. 

 No reptile undergoes any metamorphosis after leaving the egg, whilst all 

 Batrachians do so : starting life as fishes, and never leaving the water until 

 they have developed the lungs of terrestrial animals. In watching the tadpole 

 of a frog or toad, we notice, soon after birth, the presence of the external 

 gills, in which the blood is aerated. In a few days these are absorbed, and, 

 in the meantime, internal gills have been developed, which suffice for the 

 aeration of the blood, until the lungs have been developed, when the animal 

 becomes terrestrial in its habits, only returning to its native element for the 

 reproduction of its species. 



