“But how do you use a tongue like that?” said Tommy Smith.
“Put the tip of your forefinger against your thumb,” said the frog; “only, first, you must turn your hand so that the back of it is towards the ground, and the palm upwards.” Tommy Smith did so. “Now shoot your finger back as hard as you can.” Tommy Smith did this too. “That,” said the frog, “is the way I shoot my tongue out of my mouth when I want to catch a fly. Like this”—and he shot it out again. “You see it flies out like the lash of a whip, and my aim is so good that it always hits what I want it to, whether it is a fly or any other insect. Then I bring it back, just as you would bring your finger back to your thumb again, or as the lash of a whip flies back when you jerk the handle. The tip of it goes right down my throat where it was before, and the fly goes down with it.”
“But why does the fly stay on your tongue?” said Tommy Smith. “Why doesn’t it fly away?”
“It would if it could, of course,” said the frog; “but it can’t. My tongue, you see, is sticky—just feel it,—and so whatever it touches sticks to it, and comes back with it, if it isn’t too large.”
“Well, it is very curious,” said Tommy Smith. “But when you said you could catch a fly, I did not know that you were going to eat it too. Then, do you like flies? and do you eat them every day?”
“I eat them when I can get them,” said the frog; “but I like them better at night than in the daytime, if only I can catch them asleep. You eat during the day, and go to sleep at night. That is because you are a little boy. I am a frog, and we frogs like to be quiet in the daytime, and come out to feed when it is dark. We eat all sorts of insects—beetles, and flies, and moths, and caterpillars, and we eat slugs as well, and that is why we are so useful.”
“Useful?” cried Tommy Smith. “Oh, I don’t believe that! I am sure that a frog can be of no use to anybody.”
“If you were a gardener you would think differently,” said the frog; “at least, if you were not a very ignorant one. Have I not told you that I eat slugs and insects, and do you not know that slugs and insects eat the leaves of the flowers and vegetables in your garden? Have you never seen your father or his gardener pouring something over his rose-trees to kill the insects upon them? Now, I eat a great many insects in a single night, and I am only one of the frogs in your garden. There are others there besides me. If we were all to be killed, your father would find it much more difficult to have nice roses, and he would lose other flowers too, for there are insects which do harm to all of them. As for the slugs, if you will go out some night with a lantern, you may see them feeding on some of the handsomest plants, with your own eyes. That is to say, unless one of us frogs has been there; for if we have, you will not see any. Then you have seen caterpillars feeding on the cabbages. Well, I feed on those caterpillars. So always remember that the boy who kills a frog, does harm to his father’s garden.”
“I don’t want to do that,” said Tommy Smith; “so, if what you say is true”—