Few events are more gratifying than to find oneself taken more seriously
by other people than by oneself, and I am pleased therefore to discover
that our palpably artificial little pond has been taken possession of by
a colony of frogs, which must have travelled some distance to make its
acquaintance, frog-haunted ponds or even ditches being by no means
abundant on these dry hillsides of ours.
I have never myself met more than one species of frog in these islands.
Professor Bell, however, speaks of another, Rana Scotica, which he held
to be distinct, but the difference seems to be mainly one of size. It is
extremely difficult to persuade anyone who has noticed the multitudes of
frogs which swarm in Ireland that they were only introduced there
artificially, and as lately as the beginning of last century. Such,
nevertheless, is the fact, and the date of the event is, moreover, a
tolerably fixed one. It was a Dr. Gunthers, or Guithers, who, in the
year 1705, turned out a handful of spawn into a ditch near Trinity
College. For some years the frogs appear to have contented themselves
with the neighbourhood of that University, but sixteen years later, in
1721, they were found forty miles away, from which point they seem to
have rapidly extended themselves over the whole island. Incidentally the
fact is confirmed by a great, if hardly a zoological authority, namely,
Dean Swift. In his _Considerations about Maintaining the Poor_, which
appeared in the year 1726, in the course of thundering against certain
fire offices, which had the impertinence to be English, he declares that
“their marks upon our houses spread faster and further than a colony of
frogs.” The portent, therefore, it is plain, had reached his ears.
Coincidences are attractive things, and it is satisfactory to discover
that as regards earlier times we are again able to fortify our mere lay
zoology upon the authority of an eminent ecclesiastic. This time it was
St. Donatus, bishop of Etruria, who, writing in the ninth century,
assured the world, upon his episcopal authority, that no frogs or toads
existed, or, moreover, could exist in Ireland. Three centuries later
Giraldus Cambrensis tells us, however, that in his time a frog was taken
alive near Waterford, and brought into court, Robert de la Poer being
then warden. “Whereat,” he says, “Duvenold, King of Ossory, a man of
sense amongst his people, beat upon his head, and spake thus: ‘That
reptile is the bearer of doleful news to Ireland.’” Giraldus is careful,
however, to assure us that “no man will venture to suppose that this
reptile was ever born in Ireland, for the mud there does not, as in
other countries, contain the germs from which frogs are bred”; indeed,
in another part of the _Topographia Hibernica_ we learn that frogs,
toads, and snakes, if accidentally brought to Ireland, on being cast
ashore, immediately “turning on their backs, do burst and die.” This
statement is corroborated by a still more illustrious authority, that of
the Venerable Bede, whom Giraldus quotes as follows: “No reptile is
found there” (in Ireland), “neither can any serpent live in it, for,
though oft carried there out of Britain, so soon as the ship draws near
the land, and _the scent of the air from off the shore reaches them_,
immediately they die.” So efficacious was the very dust of Ireland that
on “gardens or other places in foreign lands being sprinkled with it,
immediately all venomous reptiles are driven away.” So, too, with
fragments of the skins and bones of animals born and bred in Ireland;
indeed, parings from Irish manuscripts, and scraps of the leather with
which Irish books were bound, were amongst the accredited cures for
snakebite until well on in the Middle Ages. Of his own personal
experience Giraldus relates to us how, upon a certain occasion, a thong
of Irish leather was, in his presence, drawn round a toad, and that,
“coming to the thong, the animal fell backward as if stunned. It then
tried the opposite side of the circle, but, meeting the thong all round,
it shrank from it as if it were pestiferous. At last, digging a hole
with its feet in the centre of the circle, it disappeared in the
presence of much people.”
Our frogs and toads are not likely at present to become an affliction to
us. Should they ever do so I must certainly send for some Irish leather,
or, failing that, for a pinch of Irish dust, and try its effect upon
them. An influence that has been vouched for by such a variety of
authorities ought to retain something of its ancient potency. Scientific
experiments in any case are always interesting!