were four times longer in proportion than they are now. After some time of this fish-like life, two limbs began to bud near to the junction of his body and tail--then another pair under the skin near his gills. His tail absorbed in proportion as his limbs developed, until, casting away the last of his many tadpole skins, and with it his jaws and gills, he emerged from the water a ‘gaping, wide-mouthed, waddling frog,’ to seek on land his prey, in future to consist exclusively of worms, insects, and other small living beings; still retaining his power of swimming and diving, but accomplishing it by powerful exertions of his hinder legs, which serve him on land to effect his prodigious jumps, of which we may form an estimate by knowing that a man exerting as great a power in proportion could jump upwards of one hundred yards. He cannot, however, breathe under water; and though his skin, which possesses enormous absorbing powers, may contribute a portion of the necessary stimulus to his blood, yet he must breathe as we do by getting air into his lungs, and therefore, except when he is torpid from cold, he cannot continue any great length of time under water. Observe now his mode of breathing--see with what regularity his nostrils open and shut, while the skin under his throat falls and rises in the same order, for as he is without ribs or diaphragm, his mode of inspiration is not effected as ours is; but he takes air into his closely shut mouth through his nostrils, which he then closes, and by a muscular exertion presses the air into his lungs. Were you to keep his mouth open, he would be infallibly smothered. His tongue is one of his most striking peculiarities, for instead of being rooted, as in other animals, at the throat, it is fastened to his under lip, and its point is directed to his stomach. Nevertheless, this strange arrangement is well suited to his purposes, and his tongue as an organ of prehension is very effective. It is flat, soft, and long, and is covered with a very viscid fluid. When he wishes to use it, he lowers his under jaw suddenly, and ejects and retracts his tongue with the rapidity of a flash of light, snatching away a luckless worm or beetle attached, by the secretion before alluded to, to its tip. The insertion of the tongue in front of the lower jaw serves not only to aid mechanically in its ejection and retraction, just as we manage the lash of a whip, but it saves material in its construction, for it would require much greater volume of muscle to accomplish the same end posited as tongues usually are; and it has also the advantage of bringing the food into the proper place for being swallowed, without further exertion than that of its retraction.