FROGS. 
53 
from their breeding ponds. In this account he at once sub- 
verts that fooHsh opinion of their 
dropping from the clouds in rain ; 
showing that it is from the grateful 
coolness and moisture of those show- 
ers that they are tempted to set out 
on their travels, which they defer 
till those fall.* Frogs are as yet in 
their tadpole state ; but, in a few weeks, '^""f^ 
our lanes, paths, and fields, will swarm for a few days with 
myriads of those emigrants, no larger than my little finger nail. 
Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of the method and 
situation in which the male impregnates the spawn of the female. 
How wonderful is the economy of Providence with regard to the 
limbs of so vile a reptile ! While it is an aquatic it has a fish-like 
tail, and no legs : as soon as the legs sprout, the tail drops off as 
useless, and the animal betakes itself to the land ! 
Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances that the 
rana arhorea is an English reptile ; it abounds in Germany and 
Switzerland.f 
It is to be remembered that the salamandra aquatica of Ray 
(the water-newt or eft) will frequently bite at the angler's bait, 
and is often caught on his hook. I used to take it for granted 
that the salamandra aquatica was hatched, lived, and died, in 
the water. But John Ellis, Esq., F. R. S. (the coralline Ellis) as- 
* There are many vvell-authenticated instances of the actual fact, however, strange as it may 
seem, of tadpoles, and small frogs, and the young fry of fishes being precipitated in considerable 
numbers from above, and some of them, too, in situations considerably distant from any place 
where they could have been bred. Mr. Loudon records one in the Magazine of Natural Historyt 
vol. ii., p. 103. "When at Rouen,'' he relates, **in September, 1828, 1 was assured by an English 
family, resident there, that, during a heavy thunder shower, accompanied by violent wind, and 
almost midnight darkness, an innumerable multitude of young frogs fell on and around the 
house. The roof, the window-sills, and the gravel walks were covered with them. They were 
very small, but perfectly formed ; all dead. The most obvious way," he continues, " of account- 
ing for this phenomenon is by supposing the water and frogs of some adjacent ponds to have 
been taken up by wind in a sort of whirl or tornado." The following is from a number of the 
Belfast Chronicle: "As two gentlemen were sitting conversing on a causey pillar, near Bushmills, 
they were very much surprised by the occurrence of a heavy shower of frogs, half formed, falling 
in all directions, some of which have been preserved in spirits, and are now exhibited to the 
curious by the two resident apothecaries in Bushmills." Capt. Brown relates an instance of a 
shower of young herrings falling in Kinross-shire, many of which were picked up in the fields 
around Lock Leven by persons of his acquaintance. Numerous other similar cases are recorded 
in different numbers of the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. — Ed, 
t This beautiful little species is not British, though it occurs in Normandy. It pertains to 
the genus hylU' Another member of the genus ranat however, or true frog, has been discovered 
in Forfarshire by Mr. Don, and since near Edinburgh by Dr. Stark, it has been supposed by 
some to be identical with the R. esculentat or edible frog of the continent, a species very common 
in the south of Europe. "That they are not," observes the Rer. L. Jenyns, " simple varieties of 
