In the recently issued Proceedings of the Berwickshire (England) Naturalists' Club, Commander Francis Martin Norman, the president of the body, goes over the ground often investigated, as to whether frogs and toads can be imbedded in rocks and thus live for ages. Popular opinion in England has no doubt of it. Scores, perhaps hundreds are found, who will testify that they have seen the creature hop out alive after the solid rock has been broken; but scientific people protest against any one believing in such absurdity. Every living thing, they contend, must have something in the way of food to produce animal heat, and must have oxygen before the food can be rendered available. Granting that some creatures can live long on little, we cannot believe that any can live for ages on none. That these creatures are found in suspicious situations seems to be conceded; but the remark of science is, that water with animalculae has probably found its way into a crevice, and, if water, of course, air also. Commander Norman does not believe that they would live long wholly without food and air, and repeatedly desired to see a case, should one be discovered. Fortune favored him. He was told one had been seen. He saw the frog two days after it had been taken from the rock.

It was in no ways different from any modern frog, except apparently overgrown and feeble in its motions. Though liberally supplied with food, it died in a few weeks after liberation. About half the section of the frog's prison house was saved, and this is figured in the Proceedings. The other section was not saved by the quarrymen, and could not be found. There was abundant evidence, and no question that the frog came from that cavity. The cavity was six feet from the surface of the rock bed; on this rock was eight feet of shale, and on the shale a sloping bank of ten to twelve feet of earth. The frog was thus some twenty-four feet beneath the surface. In this bed of limestone there were slight cracks running down through it, every few feet apart, but no crack seemed to connect with the frog's home in the section saved. There may have been in the missing section. This want of all the facts makes the matter quite provoking to the Commander. He cannot admit that a frog would live long under circumstances such as the facts so far indicate; he prefers, therefore, to believe that, if all were known, some fact, though now seemingly improbable, would show that air and food were accessible. Buckland's attempts to settle the question are often referred to.

His toads, in hermetically sealed vessels, did not live a year. With air, but without food, they died within two years. But, as Commander Norman remarks, the equally careful work of Mr. Jesse, " the well-known naturalist," is seldom referred to. In a flower-pot, covered by glass, so that " apparently " no insect could penetrate, and the pot sunk in the ground beneath the reach of frost, they were alive at the end of twenty years. Air and water could undoubtedly get in, and minute organisms both in the air and water follow, and the creatures may have been enabled to exist on them. The actual facts recorded under Mr. Norman's own observations do, however, show that the popular belief has good ground to stand on. - Independent.