[ 6 S3 ] 
LX. An Account of the Frog • fijh of Surinam, 
addrejjed to the Royal Society , by Mr. 
George Edwards, F. R . S. 
Read^viarch 27,^ Have now the honour to lay before 
I this Royal Society an animal not to 
be found in the Britifh Mufeum, nor in any other col- 
lection that I have feen in England, and which, per- 
haps, deferves attention, in regard to what is laid of 
its ftrange metamorphofes, as much as any part of na- 
tural hiftory whatever. It was brought from Suri- 
nam in South America, by the way of Barbadoes, to 
John Fothergill, M. D. of London, and is the ani- 
mal, which Merian and Seba defcribe as changing 
from a frog into a fifh. 
In the appendix to Merian’s Nat. Hiftory of the 
InfeCts of Surinam, where fhe treats of thetrans form- 
ation of fifties into frogs, and of frogs into fifties, af- 
ter explaining, how the European frog is changed 
from a minute fifti (or tadpole *) into a perfect frog, 
fhe proceeds to defcribe the gradual transformation of 
a fpecies of frogs found in great numbers in the ri- 
ver of Surinam, into perfeCt fifties, and gives five 
figures to illuftrate her defcription j the fubjeCts 
whereof, fhe fays, were then in the collection of Al- 
bert Seba at Amfterdam, from whom ftie alfo had her 
* I have grofsly copied Mrs. Merian’s five figures from Plate 
LXXI, the better to explain her defcriptions, which figures are 
herewith prefented. Linnreus calls this animal Paradoxa, Laft 
Edit, of his Syftema Nature, p. 2 1 2. 
4 P 2 figures 
