I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, that some
ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy to a toad,
which they nourished summer after summer, for many years, till he
grew to a monstrous size, with the maggots which turn to flesh
flies. The reptile used to come forth every evening from an hole
under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table
to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his
head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out
one eye. After this accident the creature languished for some time
and died.

I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive reading of the
excellent account there is from Mr. Derham, in Ray's Wisdom of
God in the Creation (p. 365), concerning the migration of frogs
from their breeding ponds. In this account he at once subverts that
foolish opinion of their dropping from the clouds in rain; showing
that it is from the grateful coolness and moisture of those showers
that they are tempted to set out on their travels, which they defer
till those fall. Frogs are as yet in their tadpole state; but in a few
weeks, our lanes, paths, fields, will swarm for a few days with
myriads of these emigrants, no larger than my little finger nail.
Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of the method and
situation in which the male impregnates the spawn of the female.
How wonderful is the oeconomy of Providence with regard to the
limbs of so vile a reptile! While it is aquatic it has a fish-like tail,
and no legs: as soon as the legs sprout, the tail drops off as useless,
and the animal betakes itself to the land.

Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances that the rana