The frog is a good instance of the confusion that constantly arises from applying the same words to designate different animals in different countries. The common frog of the continent is the green frog (_Rana esculenta_), while our common frog is their red frog (_Rana temporaria_). The former is of much more aquatic habits than the latter, and is not known in Ireland. I once made an attempt to introduce it here, and when in Paris directed a basket of 100 frogs to be made up for me, giving special instructions that no _common_ frogs were to be amongst them, which order I found on returning was obeyed as understood in that country, and not a single green frog was in my lot, though I intended to have none other. As articles of food there seems to be little difference, but the preference is given to the green frog. The vulgar opinion that Frenchmen eat frogs for want of better food is quite erroneous; the contrary is the fact; for a fricassee of these animals is an expensive dish in France, and is considered a delicacy. Its chief merit appears to me to be its freedom from strong flavour of any kind; a delicate stomach may indulge in it without fear of a feeling of repletion. In this country the foolish prejudices which forbid the use of many attainable articles of wholesome food, applies with force to frogs. Our starving peasants loath what princes of other nations would banquet on, and leave to badgers, hedgehogs, buzzards, herons, pike and trout, sole possession of a very nutritive and pleasant article of food. When devoured by the heron, it is in part converted into a source of wonder to the unenlightened; for the curious masses of whitish jelly found on the banks of rivers and other moist places, and said by the country people to be fallen stars, are, so far as I have been able to observe, masses of immature frog spawn in a semi-digested state; and they seemed to me to have been rejected by herons, just as we see hawks and owls reject balls of hair, feathers, or other indigestible portions of their prey.