322 The Animal-Lore of ShaJcspeare's Time. 
notion that frogs came clown in showers of rain. He 
writes:— 
“ Earths green bed 
“ With stinking frogs is sometimes covered : 
Eyther because the floating cloud doth fold 
Within it self both moist, dry, hot, and cold, 
Whence all things heef are made: or else for that 
The active windes, sweeping this dusty flat, 
Sometimes in th’ aire som fruitful! dust doo heap: 
Whence these new-formed ugly creatures leap: 
As on the edges of some standing lake 
Which neighbour mountains with their gutters make, 
The foamy slime, it selfe transforme th oft 
To green half-tadpoles, playing there aloft. 
Half-made, half-unmade; round about the flood 
Half-dead, half-living; half a frog, lialf-mud.” 
(Page 13.) 
And again:— 
“ Why! Think ye (fond) those people fell from heav’n 
All-ready-made ; as in a summer ev’n 
After a sweltring day, som sultry showr 
Doth in the marshes heaps of tadpals pour, 
Which in the ditches (chapt with parching weather) 
Lie crusht and croaking in the mud together?” 
(Page 130.) 
Topsell gives a somewhat confused account of the 
transformations of the young frog, but leans also to the 
theory that some kinds of frog are bred from slime. He 
refers to the plague of frogs in Egypt in support of the 
popular belief in frog showers. 
“ Sweet are the uses of adversity ; 
Which, like the Toad, ugly and venomous, 
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head ” 
(As You Like It, ii. 1,12.) 
“ The foule Toad has a faire stone in his heade,” 
writes Lyly (Euphues, p. 53) ; and again, “ The 
fayrer the stone is in the toades head the 
