MIDNIGHT TERROES. 
431 
destroying rats in the lowlands. They had been 
considered in Barbadoes very important auxiliaries 
to the planter in this work^ by their pursuit and 
destruction of the young rodents. I doubt the 
power of any cold-blooded reptile to do much in this 
way. Barbadoes, however, only availed herself of 
the experience of Martinique, from whence she de- 
rived her original stock of toads and frogs, Mar- 
tinique herself having imported them from Cayenne. 
When you receive the specimens put up in spirits 
for you, you will be able to ascertain whether they 
are Batrachians of the southern continent. Some 
amusing stories are told of the terror they excited 
when their first outburst of bellowing was heard. 
Families sat up all night, believing their houses 
beset by persons who played upon their fears by 
these horrible noises only to pillage their premises 
successfully. They are now ineradicably established 
among us, and are to be added to the miscalculating 
delusions which gave us hig rats ” to devour “ little 
ratSf' and the Formica omnirora^ the native ant of 
Cuba, to rid us of the accumulated pest of rats and 
vermin, and to become a more intolerable scourge 
than all the other plagues put together. The For- 
mica omnivora is set down in our chronology of 
memorable things as an importation, by Thomas 
Raffles, of the year 1762. The big rats tradition 
gives to Sir Charles Price, as your inquiries informed 
you when here.” 
Feh. %*^th, 1847. — What with their noise and 
what with their depredations on the ducklings in the 
ponds, the imported frogs are found already to be a 
