most remarkable discoveries of the last
century. The story is well known, but will bear
repeating here. The wife of Galvani, the
experimental philosopher, being in a declining
state of health, employed as a restorative a
soup made of frogs. Several of these animals,
ready skinned for use, happened to lie on
a table near the electrical machine in the
laboratory. While the machine was in
action, an attendant chanced to touch with
the point of a scalpel the crural nerve of
one of the frogs that lay not far from the
prime conductor, when it was observed that
the muscles of the limb were instantly thrown
into violent convulsions, and the discovery of
galvanism was the result of the accident.
However fortunate this discovery for mankind,
the frogs have no great reason to
rejoice in it; for, ever since, they have been,
as I observed in the outset of this paper, the
selected victims of experiments. I have
mentioned the Signora Galvani's soup. That
was not her discovery; for the diet has been
known time out of mind. In one of the
Ayscough MSS. in the British Museum
(it is a treatise "On the prolongation of life,"
of the time of Elizabeth or James the First),
frog-broth is thus described by a quaint old
gentleman who marshalled his recipes in the
shape of letters addressed to various friends:
"Frog broath. Sr your viperes " (he had
already given the receipt for viper-broth)
"being taken off from board, give mee leave
to present you wh. a supernumerarie dish of
frog-broath: you will either receive it and
taste of it as a raritie, or as an antidote, for
the ancients held it of soveraine force to help
thosse whom venemous creatures had stung.
Ælius and Paulus commend their broath
with salt and oile in such poisonous bitings.
I have knowne some that have drunke it,
and eaten the flesh of them boiled and fried,
troubled afterwards with such vehement
vomiting that they suspected themselves
poisoned" (No great inducement this with
the friend to whom the "frog-broath" was
recommended). "In Fraunce I once, by
chance, eate them fried, but thought they had
bein another meate, otherwise I had not bin
so hastie. But it might bee that thosse were
frogs from standing-pooles and marshes:
palustres ranas venendas credidit Ælius.
But bee they of what sort you will, I think
penurie made some use them, and luxurie
others, whose fat feeding and wanton
stomacks crave unnaturall things, mushrups,
snailes, &c. For my parte, I would interdict
them altogethere, especiallie seeing for gaine
the seller mixes any kind of them, rubetas et
mutas ranas, wh. without doubt are poison,
and some have observed that mosse frogs,
which when they are flead of a white colour,
are more hurtful. Over fondnesse makes us
take aniething, al mixtures of herbes in
sallets. And as I have heard, some Italian
merchants at Antwerp, to have more varietie
than others in them, unwittingly mixed the
seeds of aconite, and al that eate that sallet
died."

To explain the word Rubetas in the foregoing
letter, recourse must be had to Pliny,
who says, "The venomous frogs and todes
called Rubetæ, live both on land and also in
water." But, in truth, the esculent frog,
whether served in broth, stewed with a sauce
velouté, or fried in batter, is a very dainty
dish. Poor Benson Hill, who wrote a capital
Diary of Good-living, used to commend them
highly. "With due reverence," he observes,
"for the noble sirloin, I cannot but think
that the hind-legs of some half-dozen good-
sized frogs, taken out of a fine crystal pool,
fried with an abundance of cream and parsley,
well crisped, would make a convert of the
most bigoted John Bull, provided you did not
tell him the name of the dish until he had
accustomed himself to its flavour."

The objection to frogs as an article of diet
is, indeed, a mere prejudice on the part of
those who have never eaten them. In what
respect are they worse than eels? The frog
who swallows young birds and ducklings is
surely as clean a feeder as the snake-like
creature that dines on dead dogs, and makes
the celebrity of the ait at Twickenham. Or
is a frog less savoury than a rat? And yet
what a price was paid for rats at the siege of
Kars! If the garrison could only have been
supplied with lots of frogs—literal or
metaphorical—the Russians would never have
taken the place. Again, does a snail—the
large escargot, which people are so fond of in
Paris—appear more tempting than a frog?
Or that animal picked out of its shell with a
pin, and called, in vulgar parlance, a winkle?
"Away, then," as indignant orators say,—
"away, then, with this cant of false-delicacy
and squeamishness, and the very first
opportunity you have, O lector fastidiose! order
A Dish of Frogs. They are quite as good
as whitebait, when assisted by a flask of
Rhenish."

The anonymous gentleman, whose letter I
quoted above, spoke of the frog as an antidote
against poison, and referred to the belief
entertained by the ancients in this respect.
The works of the old writers, indeed, abound
in frog-phylacteries. Hear Pliny (through
the medium of Philemon Holland ): "The
decoction of sea-frogs sodden in wine and
vinegre, is a soveraigne drinke for all poisons,
but especially for the venom of the hedge-
toad and salamander. As for the froggs of
rivers and fresh-waters, if a man either eat
the flesh or drink the broth wherein they
were sodden, he shall finde it verie good
against the poison of the sea-hare (What
animal is that?), or the sting of the serpents
above-named; but more particularly against
the pricke of scorpions they would bee, boiled
in wine. Moreover, Democritus saith, that
if a man take out the tongue of a frog alive
(the old story, cruelty), so that no other part
thereof stick thereto, and after he hath let