Frog (foot)

“ With a frog of good size, low down, and taking part in the pressure of the foot on the ground, contraction will be prevented. On the other hand, an ill-developed frog, one wasted by long-continued and spreading thrush, or one robbed of its normal function by excessive paring in the forge, is a common starting-point of the condition we are considering. ”

“ Probably no place can furnish a greater variety of frogs belonging to the same genera, among which we find the bell-frog, speckled frog, green frog, some of them being nine inches in length, measuring from the tip of the nose to the terminus of the hind-foot toe, which amphibious quadruped, when full grown, will weigh over a pound. The bell-frog is supposed to have been named from the voice, which is fancied to be exactly like a loud cow-bell. ”

“ These are known as the Lateral Lacunæ.
The Sides of the frog are flat and slightly oblique. They are closely united to the bars and to the triangular indentation in the posterior border of the sole.
The Base of the frog is formed by the extremities of its branches, which, becoming wider and more convex as they pass backwards, form two rounded, flexible, and elastic masses separated from each other by the median lacuna. ”

“ The frog being placed at and filling the hinder part of the foot, discharges a part of the duty sustained by the crust; for it supports the weight of the animal. It assists, likewise, and that to a material degree, in the expansion of the foot. ”

“ When far advanced, contraction offers signs that cannot well be missed. The converging of the heels narrows the V-shaped indentation in the sole for the reception of the frog. As a consequence of this, the frog itself becomes atrophied by reason of the continual pressure exerted upon it by the ingrowing horn of the wall and the bars. The median and lateral lacunæ of this organ, from being fairly broad and open channels, become pressed into mere crack-like openings (see the commencing of this condition in Fig. 80, and a badly wasted frog in Fig. 74A) . ”

“ The frog is next set down on a plantain leaf, the ritual already described with the squares, toddy, etc., is performed, the frog is wrapped up together with the various substances in the leaf, and buried at some spot where two or more roads meet, and which the victim is likely to pass. Should he cross the fateful spot, he will suddenly become conscious of a feeling in his foot, as though a thorn had pricked him. ”

“ In another respect these animals are wonderfully provided for the mode of existence they are compelled to pursue. Not only have they to cross wide snow-covered districts, but frequently to pass across frozen expanses of water. To enable them to do this in the winter, the frog of the foot is almost entirely absorbed, and the edges of the hoof, now quite concave, grow out in sharp ridges, each division on the under surface presenting the appearance of a huge mussel-shell, and serving the office of natural skates. ”

“ This gives us a combination of causes leading to pressure and bruises upon the sensitive structures at the seat of corn.
By this unequal paring of the toe and the heels greater weight is thrown upon the posterior half of the foot. What then happens to the structures thinned as we have described is this: the pared frog, lessened in volume, does not meet the ground. It therefore fails to expand laterally with weight, and cannot assist, as normally it should, in aiding the heels generally in their movements of expansion. ”

“ Then they both went down to the water and began to eat young frogs. It was a terrible thing to see! Bully trembled from head to foot, while great drops of sweat stood out all over his little body. The ducks swam around contentedly, quacking all the time. Every once in a while he could see them put their heads down under the water—far down until the water was clear above their eyes. And every time their heads came up out of the water he saw the arms and legs of baby frogs disappearing in those big mouths.
Bully saw the baby frogs disappearing in the Ducks' mouths
It was an awful sight. ”

“ As a further result of non-resistance on the part of the frog, this time in a lateral direction, the bars, the sole, and the wall at the heels all contract at the exact time they should expand. The end result must mean abnormal pressure and bruising of the sensitive structures in that particular region. Naturally, also, the excessive thinning of the horn renders direct injury to the sole from stones or other objects in the road far more probable. ”

“ These are largely dependent on the fact that more or less constantly the patient saves the heel. The horn of the walls in this region, and the horn of the frog, is thereby put out of action and induced to atrophy. The hoof gradually assumes a more upright shape, and the heels contract. We thus get a hoof which is visibly narrowed from side to side, with a frog that is atrophied and often thrushy, and with a sole that is abnormally concave, hard, and affected with corns. ”

“ Instead of blistering the coronet (or in conjunction with that treatment) , the counter-irritant may be applied by passing a seton through the plantar cushion or fibro-fatty frog. Setoning the frog appears to have been introduced by Sewell. In many cases great benefit is claimed to have been derived from it, especially by English veterinarians of Sewell's time, and by others on the Continent. Percival, however, was not an advocate for it, and, at the present day, it is a practice which appears to have dropped out of use altogether. ”

“ To begin with, the heels are naturally weak, and, once the bars are removed, there is nothing to prevent them rapidly caving in towards the frog. Even when carefully shod, a foot of this class is readily prone to contract directly the animal is brought into the stable, and the horn commences to dry to excess. An ordinary light shoe should be used, and the nails should be light and thin. ”

“ When warmed in hot water, or by itself, it becomes soft and plastic, and may readily be pressed to the lower surface of the foot, so as to fill in all little cracks and irregularities, and furnish a complete covering to the sole and frog, and to the bearing surface of the wall. When cold it hardens, without losing the shape given to it, into a hard, leather-like substance. ”

“ The feet of the hind legs are webbed and have five fingers or toes.
[Pg 225]
The frog has a backbone, but no ribs. As he is ribless he cannot expand and contract his chest in breathing, so that he must swallow what air he wants. In swallowing air he must close his mouth and take the air in only by the nostrils; therefore, oddly enough, if his mouth is forcibly kept open he may be smothered. [64] The frog’s breathing is partly through its skin, which gives off carbonic acid gas; and moisture is as needful to a frog’s skin as to the gills of a fish. ”

“ The weakened bars and the thinned sole, meeting with no opposition from the frog, give downwards and inwards with the body-weight at the precise moment these movements should be directed mainly outwards. ”

“ It is, perhaps, even more likely to be confounded with contraction when we have with the contraction a state of atrophy and thrush of the frog. With a frog in this condition pressure will give rise to pain, and navicular disease be erroneously judged to be present. In such a case we must rely wholly upon either extreme flexion or extreme extension of the joint to guide us, when, if contraction only is the offending condition, no symptom of pain will be shown. ”

“ At other times the prick is not so readily apparent. The nail or other object has penetrated and afterwards withdrawn itself. The natural elasticity of the horn, especially that of the frog, causes it to contract upon the puncture, and to largely obliterate the hole made. What, therefore, may look to be but a simple injury to the horn alone may in reality be the only evidence of a stab complicating the sensitive structures. ”

“ They grow into legs. Then the gills go inside and become lungs. The hind legs come next. The tail grows shorter, and the animal broader. One day the tad-pole is gone. The frog jumps out on a rock and catches an insect for dinner. He sits blinking in the sun as if he wonders how he did it. The frog is a land animal that grew from a water baby. It likes to live on the edge of a pond where it can dive and swim whenever it feels like it. ”

“ When it drops to the ground it is scarcely discernible from the dry vegetation about it. The wood-frog maintains the moisture of its skin by hiding in damp moss or in decayed logs, and in little hollows in the ground. It avoids the sunshine, and keeps close to the earth.
The tree-frog is another curious frog. Smaller than its cousins, it is dressed in bright green, spotted with black, and has a membrane stretched between its toes, which gives its feet a broad, flat surface, and helps to sustain it as it leaps from branch to branch, somewhat in the fashion of a flying squirrel. ”

“ The flat pointed head seems to be in contact with the ground or very near to it as the animal moves about rapidly and erratically. The frog has a proclivity for squeezing into holes and cracks, or beneath objects on the ground. The burst of activity by one that is startled lasts for only a few seconds. ”

“ She held her broad browed head erect, the bristles pointed like needles from her blood-streaked muzzle, grit and pluck could be traced in her every movement, and, in her eyes, universal defiance.
Down the dark watercourse she went, twisting her lithe chestnut body S-wise in and out of the coarse grass-clumps. A frog leaped before her. In a flash she had flung herself upon it, her white teeth clicked together in its brain, and she sauntered slowly out of sight, bearing her latest victim in her mouth. It was hideous. To eat vegetables was natural enough, but to eat living, quivering flesh! ”

“ A big frog from the neighbour pool, unaware that there had been any intrusion here, came swimming up, on some errand of private urgency, and made directly for the log. The next instant, before he had any inkling of the imminence of doom, the raccoon's forepaw shot out like a flash. It was a wide-spread, flexible paw, like a little, black, lean hand, strong and delicate, the fingers tipped with formidable claws. It caught the swimming frog under the belly, swept him from the water, and threw him far up on to the shore. ”

“ Although the frog is essentially a land animal, it is quite at home in the water, and swims gracefully and easily by the help of the webs which connect the long toes of its hind feet. On land, it progresses by long leaps, its limbs and body being [Pg 335] well adapted to this habit. As is usual in leaping animals, the hind legs and feet are markedly longer than the fore limbs; and the shortness of the body enables the two pairs of limbs to be brought together to break the shock of the fall. ”

“ It is very strong, and often destroys the Spring Frog. It inserts the claws of the two fore-feet into one of the frog's hind legs, and with the claws of its hind feet it grapples rice-stubble, or some aquatic plant; the frog unable to disengage itself becomes exhausted by struggling. ”

“ It differs from our common frog in wanting a dark mark that runs from eye to shoulder, and in having, instead of it, a light mark—a streak—from head to tail along the centre of the back. The male is a more portentous croaker than our own familiar musicians, by virtue of an air-bladder on each cheek, into which air is forced, and in which it vibrates powerfully during the act of croaking. This kind of frog is always in or near the water, and being very timid, plunges out of sight if any one approaches.
These are our frogs; as for our two Toads, they are by no means less innocent. ”

“ It is impossible to watch the horizontal motions of a frog in the water, as it is impelled by these muscles and its webbed feet, without being struck by the complete resemblance in this portion of its frame to human conformation, and the almost perfect identity of the movements of its lower extremities with those of a man making the same efforts in the same situation. ”

“ As the pattering music of the April showers on the waiting land is a rune of the ancient earth, so the love song of the swamp tree frog dreams down the years to us all the way from the carboniferous age. When the coal measures were forests of tree ferns, and the first men paddled through steaming shallows in their shade, the swamp tree frog was a tree frog indeed, and sang his soothing song from their branches. Since then he has degenerated and has lost most of the adhesive power of the tiny disks on fingers{163} and toes. He no longer clings readily to trees, and is but an awkward climber. ”

“ The entire frog family is as protectively colored as this least member, the cricket-frog. They all carry fern-seed in their pockets and go invisible. Notice the wood-frog with his tan suit and black cheeks. He is a mere sound as he hops about over the brown leaves. I have had him jump out of the way of my feet and vanish while I stared hard at him. He lands with legs extended, purposely simulating the shape of the ragged, broken leaves, and offers, as the only clue for one's baffled eyes, the moist glisten as his body dissolves against the dead brown of the leaf-carpet. ”

“ The skin in this, the typical genus, is smooth; the hinder legs are very long, muscular, and formed for leaping; the toes of the hind feet are connected by a web; there are teeth on the upper jaw, and on the palate; the gape is very wide; the tongue, broad, soft, notched at the extremity, is folded back, the anterior portion lying ordinarily on the posterior; the eyes are brilliant and prominent, and elevated above the forehead.
The Common Frog (Rana temporaria, Linn.) is familiar to every child. ”