lip somewhat under the water, that the
gargell with their tongues levell to the water,
which they receive into their throat; and
so while the tongue quavereth withal they
make that croaking noise abovesaid. He
that would looke then advisedly upon them,
should see their specks so swolne, and
stretched out full, that they will shine
again: he should perceive their eyes ardent
and fiery with paines that they take them
with the water." With one or two points of
difference this description would apply to a
principal operatic tenor as well as to a Batrachian.
Neither the frog's song nor that of
the "first tenor" is altogether for his own
amusement; he has a purpose of utility in
the exercise of his voice, and you can meet
with no surer indication of coming rain than
the announcement made by the Hyla;
who may be looked upon as a living
barometer—more especially the male which,
if kept under a glass and supplied with
proper food, will infallibly foretell a change
from dry weather to wet.

I am a little surprised that De Lacepède
who, as I have shown, is quite alive to many
of the fine points in a frog's nature, should
disparage the frog's voice in the manner he does
"If frogs," he observes, "are to hold a
distinguished rank among the oviparous quadrupeds
it is certainly not on account of their voices;
for, in proportion as they please by the agility
of their movements and the beauty of their
colours, they annoy us by their hoarse croaking.
Nature certainly never intended them to be
the musicians of our fields." This, however,
is a mere matter of taste, and perhaps M. de
Lacepède had himself what is called a voice,
and was afflicted with the pangs of professional
jealousy. Of the other faculties with which
the frog family are endowed, we are told that
"their taste is probably not at all acute;"
acute enough, however, to enable them to
select the most tempting morsels; for M. de
Lacepède expressly says, they reject everything
that at all assumes an approach to
decomposition ("Elles rejettent tout ce qui
pourrait présenter un commencement de
décomposition.") We are informed that
"their sense of smell would seem to be
almost rudimentary," and that in them
"touch, properly, so called, can hardly
exist in a high state of development;"
but, as a set-off to these alleged imperfections,
they are wonderfully quick of sight
and hearing. Those gold-encircled eyes
and golden ears were not given them for
nothing.

There are, of course, endless varieties of the
frog-tribe. The most beautiful, perhaps, is
that description of Hyla, called, by Cuvier, La
Rainette bicolore, celestial blue on the back and
rose-coloured beneath ("bleu céleste endessus,
rosée en dessous"); this is a native of South
America. Another of the South American
tree-frogs, La Rainette à tapirer (R. tinctoria;
"the dyer") possesses the singular property
of imparting its colour to the feathers of birds.
"The blood of this frog," says De Lacepède,
"impregnated into the skin of parroquets
at the places where their feathers have
been pulled out, causes red or yellow feathers
to appear, and produces that tuft which is
called tapiré. This frog is of a brownish hue
with two white streaks crossing the back in
two places." Without venturing to doubt this
statement, I merely wish to ask, who it is that
commences the operation of grafting that ends
in dyeing? A third South American Hyla,
called "Couleur de Lait" (milk frog) is as
white as snow, with spots here and there somewhat
less dazzling; the stomach is marked
with "ash-coloured stripes." A fourth American
Hyla is called "La Fluteuse" (the flute-
player) from its melodious croaking (qui coasse
mélodieusement!); its cry, unlike that of its
European brethren, denotes the approach of
dry weather. Surinam—rich in amphibia—
produces a different kind of bicolored frog;
it is blue and yellow (like a new number of the
Edinburgh Review); the Rana paradoxa, or
paradoxical frog (possibly a reviewer in his
own way) is also to be found there. Styria is
the habitat of the Rana Alpina, or black frog;
in the island of Lemnos, La Bossue or hump-backed
frog is found; in North America,
the Rana squamigera or scaly frog (very
scaly); and if Lamarck the naturalist could
have proved his position, there would have
been another frog such as the world has
not seen since the days of the Antediluvian
Batrachians. His was the development
theory, adopted and enlarged by the more
modern and mysterious author of the Vestiges
of the Natural History of Creation:—
the notion that one being advances in the
course of generations to another, in
consequence merely of its experience of wants
calling for the exercise of certain faculties in
a particular direction, by which exercise,
new developments of organs take place, and
end in variations sufficient to constitute a
new species. On this principle he presumed
that a frog transported to the sandy plains of
tropical Africa might, by dint of gasping and
elongating the cervical process, become a
giraffe. It would have been difficult to
imagine a more striking metamorphosis;
except the development of a tadpole into a
man—a belief to which some recent philosophers
seriously incline.

Of all the bonâ-fide frogs known, the
most estimable, beyond a doubt, is the Rana
esculenta, or edible green frog. Of this
species, the distinctive characteristics are,
that it is of an olive colour, spotted with,
black, with three yellowish lines on the back;
the abdomen whitish, the limbs elegantly
marked with black bands. It is the largest
of the European frogs, and furnishes many a
treat to the gourmands of France, Germany,
and Italy.

It was in the last-named country that the
preparation of frogs for food led to one of the