Abstract
MY wine-cellar has been visited during the recent rains with a curious plague of small frogs (Rana temporaria) all the same size, about one inch long. There would be nothing surprising in this visitation were it not for the apparent absence of any means of communication from outside, the level of which is six feet above that of the cellar; there is no drain near that part of the house. There is a step up before you go down into the wine-cellar from the adjacent cellar, against which the door closes, leaving no crack any animal so large could squeeze through. The cellar has solid stone walls and a bricked floor. During the recent floods the water stood some three or four inches deep there, apparently oozing through a tiny hole level with the floor on the outside wall, into which the point of a pencil could only penetrate for an inch. Even had it been possible for these little creatures to come in that way they must have burrowed down six feet from the outside level. Only one or two were found in the cellar adjacent, which is lighted by a grating into the garden, whereas in the wine-cellar two or three dozen were caught, many of them drowned by the flood.
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THOMAS, R. A Plague of Small Frogs. Nature 45, 8 (1891). https://doi.org/10.1038/045008c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/045008c0
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