Happening to be in Germany in 1846, I was desirous of getting some insight into the manners and customs of these inhabitants of the ponds, and, after much observation, arrived at the same conclusion concerning them as the master of one of Her Majesty's ships did respecting the subjects of the Imaun of Muscat. Being compelled to record categorically a reply to the inquiry, "What are the manners and customs of the inhabitants?" he wrote, "Manners they have none, and their customs, are very beastly." So of these frogs, say I. My knowledge of their vicinity was based upon auricular confession. Night after night the most infernal din of croaking bore testimony to the fact that they were unburdening their consciences, and I determined to try if I could not unburden their bodies of their batrachian souls altogether. However, before I detail my proceedings, I have a word to say with reference to their croaking. Horace bears expressive testimony to the disgust _he_ felt at it, when, after a heavy supper to help him on his way to Brundusium, he exclaimed ----"Mali culices, ranæque palustres Avertunt somnos." So loud and continuous is their song, especially in the breeding season, that in the former good old times of France, when nobles _were_ nobles, and lived in their magnificent chateaus scattered throughout the country, the peasants were employed during the whole night in beating the ponds within ear-shot of the chateaus, with boughs of trees, to prevent the slumbers of the lords and ladies being broken by their paludine neighbors. This croaking is produced by the air being driven from the lungs into the puffed-out cavity of the mouth, or into certain guttural sacculi, which are developed very largely in the males. They can produce this noise under water as well as on land. In the male frog there are fissures at the corners of the mouth for admitting the external protrusion of the vocal sacculi. These sacculi they invariably protrude in their struggles to escape when held by the hind legs. Under these circumstances they are also capable of uttering a peculiar shrill cry of distress, differing completely from their ordinary croak.