THE EXTRAVAGANT FROG. 
Strange as it may appear, it is nevertheless true that 
a gourmand of a frog may sometimes have the opportunity 
of enjoying an expensive meal at the cost of the lives of his 
friends and near relations. In illustration of this I will 
give an instance. An American frog dined at the expense 
of the writer, who had to pay in money, while the near 
relations, cousins I may call them, of Mr. Frog, paid dearly 
by losing their lives upon the occasion. 
In England and on the Continent a dinner for one, not 
including wine, etc., should not exceed five or six shillings, 
but the idea of food costing this sum being swallowed, at a 
single repast, by an epicurean frog, seems quite out of all 
reason. 
The facts on this occasion were as follows : — Having 
purchased about a dozen of the pretty fire-bellied toads 
{Bombinator igneus) from Saxony at a shilling each, I 
had them placed in a large glass case in which a happy 
family of frogs, etc., were supposed to be enjoying each 
other’s society. This state of bliss, however, was not to 
be shared by my Saxon friends, for whom the American 
frog {Bana catesbiana) exhibited a great fondness, dis- 
tending its jaws, — which reminded me of the not un- 
frequent expression of kind mothers who say to the baby, 
I could eat you, you darling,” but, with this difference, 
our Yankee frog commenced immediately to swallow, “ all 
200 
