Part 53

Frogs proper are typified by the common British species, _Rana temporaria_, and its allies, such as the edible frog, _R. esculenta_, and the American bull-frog _R. catesbiana_. The genus _Rana_ may be defined as firmisternal Ecaudata with cylindrical transverse processes to the sacral vertebra, teeth in the upper jaw and on the vomer, a protrusible tongue which is free and forked behind, a horizontal pupil and more or less webbed toes. It includes about 200 species, distributed over the whole world with the exception of the greater part of South America and Australia. Some of the species are thoroughly aquatic and have fully webbed toes, others are terrestrial, except during the breeding season, others are adapted for burrowing, by means of the much-enlarged and sharp-edged tubercle at the base of the inner toe, whilst not a few have the tips of the digits dilated into disks by which they are able to climb on trees. In most of the older classifications great importance was attached to these physiological characters, and a number of genera were established which, owing to the numerous annectent forms which have since been discovered, must be abandoned. The arboreal species were thus associated with the true tree-frogs, regardless of their internal structure. We now know that such adaptations are of comparatively small importance, and cannot be utilized for establishing groups higher than genera in a natural or phylogenetic classification. The tree-frogs, _Hylidae_, with which the arboreal _Ranidae_ were formerly grouped, show in their anatomical structure a close resemblance to the toads, _Bufonidae_, and are therefore placed far away from the true frogs, however great the superficial resemblance between them.

Some frogs grow to a large size. The bull-frog of the eastern United States and Canada, reaching a length of nearly 8 in. from snout to vent, long regarded as the giant of the genus, has been surpassed by the discovery of _Rana guppyi_ (8-1/2 in.) in the Solomon Islands, and of _Rana goliath_ (10 in.) in South Cameroon.

The family _Ranidae_ embraces a large number of genera, some of which are very remarkable. Among these may be mentioned the hairy frog of West Africa, _Trichobatrachus robustus_, some specimens of which have the sides of the body and of the hind limbs covered with long villosities, the function of which is unknown, and its ally _Gampsosteonyx batesi_, in which the last phalanx of the fingers and toes is sharp, claw-like and perforates the skin. To this family also belong the _Rhacophorus_ of eastern Asia, arboreal frogs, some of which are remarkable for the extremely developed webs between the fingers and toes, which are believed to act as a parachute when the frog leaps from the branches of trees (flying-frog of A. R. Wallace), whilst others have been observed to make aerial nests between leaves overhanging water, a habit which is shared by their near allies the _Chiromantis_ of tropical Africa. _Dimorphognathus_, from West Africa, is the unique example of a sexual dimorphism in the dentition, the males being provided with a series of large sharp teeth in the lower jaw, which in the female, as in most other members of the family, is edentulous. The curious horned frog of the Solomon Islands, _Ceratobatrachus guentheri_, which can hardly be separated from the _Ranidae_, has teeth in the lower jaw in both sexes, whilst a few forms, such as _Dendrobates_ and _Cardioglossa_, which on this account have been placed in a distinct family, have no teeth at all, as in toads. These facts militate strongly against the importance which was once attached to the dentition in the classification of the tailless batrachians.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The word "frog" is in O.E. _frocga_ or _frox_, cf. Dutch _vorsch_, Ger. _Frosch_; Skeat suggests a possible original source in the root meaning "to jump," "to spring," cf. Ger. _froh_, glad, joyful and "frolic." The term is also applied to the following objects: the horny part in the center of a horse's hoof; an attachment to a belt for suspending a sword, bayonet, &c.; a fastening for the front of a coat, still used in military uniforms, consisting of two buttons on opposite sides joined by ornamental looped braids; and, in railway construction, the point where two rails cross. These may be various transferred applications of the name of the animal, but the "frog" of a horse was also called "frush," probably a corruption of the French name _fourchette_, lit. little fork. The ornamental braiding is also more probably due to "frock," Lat. _floccus_.

FROG-BIT, in botany, the English name for a small floating herb known botanically as _Hydrocharis Morsus-Ranae_, a member of the order Hydrocharideae, a family of Monocotyledons. The plant has rosettes of roundish floating leaves, and multiplies like the strawberry plant by means of runners, at the end of which new leaf-rosettes develop. Staminate and pistillate flowers are borne on different plants; they have three small green sepals and three broadly ovate white membranous petals. The fruit, which is fleshy, is not found in Britain. The plant occurs in ponds and ditches in England and is rare in Ireland.

FROGMORE, a mansion within the royal demesne of Windsor, England, in the Home Park, 1 m. S.E. of Windsor Castle. It was occupied by George III.'s queen, Charlotte, and later by the duchess of Kent, mother of Queen Victoria, who died here in 1861. The mansion, a plain building facing a small lake, has in its grounds the mausoleum of the duchess of Kent and the royal mausoleum. The first is a circular building surrounded with Ionic columns and rising in a dome, a lower chamber within containing the tomb, while in the upper chamber is a statue of the duchess. There is also a bust of Princess Hohenlohe-Langenberg, half-sister of Queen Victoria; and before the entrance is a memorial erected by the queen to Lady Augusta Stanley (d. 1876), wife of Dean Stanley. The royal mausoleum, a cruciform building with a central octagonal lantern, richly adorned within with marbles and mosaics, was erected (1862-1870) by Queen Victoria over the tomb of Albert, prince consort, by whose side the queen herself was buried in 1901. There are also memorials to Princess Alice and Prince Leopold in the mausoleum. To the south of the mansion are the royal gardens and dairy.

FROHLICH, ABRAHAM EMANUEL (1796-1865), Swiss poet, was born on the 1st of February 1796 at Brugg in the canton of Aargau, where his father was a teacher. After studying theology at Zurich he became a pastor in 1817 and returned as teacher to his native town, where he lived for ten years. He was then appointed professor of the German language and literature in the cantonal school at Aarau, which post he lost, however, in the political quarrels of 1830. He afterwards obtained the post of teacher and rector of the cantonal college, and was also appointed assistant minister at the parish church. He died at Baden in Aargau on the 1st of December 1865. His works are--_170 Fabeln_ (1825); _Schweizerlieder_ (1827); _Das Evangelium St Johannis, in Liedern_ (1830); _Elegien an Wieg' und Sarg_ (1835); _Die Epopoen; Ulrich Zwingli_ (1840); _Ulrich von Hutten_ (1845); _Auserlesene Psalmen und geistliche Lieder fur die Evangelisch-reformirte Kirche des Cantons Aargau_ (1844); _Uber den Kirchengesang der Protestanten_ (1846); _Trostlieder_ (1852); _Der Junge Deutsch-Michel_ (1846); _Reimspruche aus Staat, Schule, und Kirche_ (1820). An edition of his collected works, in 5 vols., was published at Frauenfeld in 1853. Frohlich is best known for his two heroic poems, _Ulrich Zwingli_ and _Ulrich von Hutten_, and especially for his fables, which have been ranked with those of Hagedorn, Lessing and Gellert.

See the _Life_ by R. Fasi (Zurich, 1907).

FROHSCHAMMER, JAKOB (1821-1893), German theologian and philosopher, was born at Illkofen, near Regensburg, on the 6th of January 1821. Destined by his parents for the Roman Catholic priesthood, he studied theology at Munich, but felt an ever-growing attraction to philosophy. Nevertheless, after much hesitation, he took what he himself calls the most mistaken step of his life, and in 1847 entered the priesthood. His keenly logical intellect, and his impatience of authority where it clashed with his own convictions, quite unfitted him for that unquestioning obedience which the Church demanded. It was only after open defiance of the bishop of Regensburg that he obtained permission to continue his studies at Munich. He at first devoted himself more especially to the study of the history of dogma, and in 1850 published his _Beitrage zur Kirchengeschichte_, which was placed on the Index Expurgatorius. But he felt that his real vocation was philosophy, and after holding for a short time an extraordinary professorship of theology, he became professor of philosophy in 1855. This appointment he owed chiefly to his work, _Uber den Ursprung der menschlichen Seelen_ (1854), in which he maintained that the human soul was not implanted by a special creative

## act in each case, but was the result of a secondary creative act on the

part of the parents: that soul as well as body, therefore, was subject to the laws of heredity. This was supplemented in 1855 by the controversial _Menschenseele und Physiologie_. Undeterred by the offence which these works gave to his ecclesiastical superiors, he published in 1858 the _Einleitung in die Philosophie und Grundriss der Metaphysik_, in which he assailed the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, that philosophy was the handmaid of theology. In 1861 appeared _Uber die Aufgabe der Naturphilosophie und ihr Verhaltnis zur Naturwissenschaft_, which was, he declared, directed against the purely mechanical conception of the universe, and affirmed the necessity of a creative Power. In the same year he published _Uber die Freiheit der Wissenschaft_, in which he maintained the independence of science, whose goal was truth, against authority, and reproached the excessive respect for the latter in the Roman Church with the insignificant part played by the German Catholics in literature and philosophy. He was denounced by the pope himself in an apostolic brief of the 11th of December 1862, and students of theology were forbidden to attend his lectures. Public opinion was now keenly excited; he received an ovation from the Munich students, and the king, to whom he owed his appointment, supported him warmly. A conference of Catholic _savants_, held in 1863 under the presidency of Dollinger, decided that authority must be supreme in the Church. When, however, Dollinger and his school in their turn started the Old Catholic movement, Frohschammer refused to associate himself with their cause, holding that they did not go far enough, and that their declaration of 1863 had cut the ground from under their feet. Meanwhile he had, in 1862, founded the _Athenaum_ as the organ of Liberal Catholicism. For this he wrote the first adequate account in German of the Darwinian theory of natural selection, which drew a warm letter of appreciation from Darwin himself. Excommunicated in 1871, he replied with three articles, which were reproduced in thousands as pamphlets in the chief European languages: _Der Fels Petri in Rom_ (1873), _Der Primat Petri und des Papstes_ (1875), and _Das Christenthum Christi und das Christenthum des Papstes_ (1876). In _Das neue Wissen und der neue Glaube_ (1873) he showed himself as vigorous an opponent of the materialism of Strauss as of the doctrine of papal infallibility. His later years were occupied with a series of philosophical works, of which the most important were: _Die Phantasie als Grundprincip des Weltprocesses_ (1877), _Uber die Genesis der Menschheit und deren geistige Entwicklung in Religion, Sittlichkeit und Sprache_ (1883), and _Uber die Organisation und Cultur der menschlichen Gesellschaft_ (1885). His system is based on the unifying principle of imagination (_Phantasie_), which he extends to the objective creative force of Nature, as well as to the subjective mental phenomena to which the term is usually confined. He died at Bad Kreuth in the Bavarian Highlands on the 14th of June 1893.

In addition to other treatises on theological subjects, Frohschammer was also the author of _Monaden und Weltphantasie_ and _Uber die Bedeutung der Einbildungskraft in der Philosophie Kants und Spinozas_ (1879); _Uber die Principien der Aristotelischen Philosophie und die Bedeutung der Phantasie in derselben_ (1881); _Die Philosophie als Idealwissenschaft und System_ (1884); _Die Philosophie des Thomas von Aquino kritisch gewurdigt_ (1889); _Uber das Mysterium Magnum des Daseins_ (1891); _System der Philosophie im Umriss_, pt. i. (1892). His autobiography was published in A. Hinrichsen's _Deutsche Denker_ (1888). See also F. Kirchner, _Uber das Grundprincip des Weltprocesses_ (1882), with special reference to F.; E. Reich, _Weltanschauung und Menschenleben; Betrachtungen uber die Philosophie J. Frohschammers_ (1894); B. Munz, _J. Frohschammer, der Philosoph der Weltphantasie_ (1894) and _Briefe von und uber J. Frohschammer_ (1897); J. Friedrich, _Jakob Frohschammer_ (1896) and _Systematische und kritische Darstellung der Psychologie J. Frohschammers_ (1899); A. Attensperger, _J. Frohschammers philosophisches System im Grundriss_ (1899).

FROISSART, JEAN (1338-1410?), French chronicler and raconteur, historian of his own times. The personal history of Froissart, the circumstances of his birth and education, the incidents of his life, must all be sought in his own verses and chronicles. He possessed in his own lifetime no such fame as that which attended the steps of Petrarch; when he died it did not occur to his successors that a chapter might well be added to his _Chronicle_ setting forth what manner of man he was who wrote it. The village of Lestines, where he was cure, has long forgotten that a great writer ever lived there. They cannot point to any house in Valenciennes as the lodging in which he put together his notes and made history out of personal reminiscences. It is not certain when or where he died, or where he was buried. One church, it is true, doubtfully claims the honour of holding his bones. It is that of St Monegunda of Chimay.

"Gallorum sublimis honos et fama tuorum, Hic Froissarde, jaces, _si modo forte jaces_."

It is fortunate, therefore, that the scattered statements in his writings may be so pieced together as to afford a tolerably connected history of his life year after year. The personality of the man, independently of his adventures, may be arrived at by the same process. It will be found that Froissart, without meaning it, has portrayed himself in clear and well-defined outline. His forefathers were _jures_ (aldermen) of the little town of Beaumont, lying near the river Sambre, to the west of the forest of Ardennes. Early in the 14th century the castle and seigneurie of Beaumont fell into the hands of Jean, younger son of the count of Hainaut. With this Jean, sire de Beaumont, lived a certain canon of Liege called Jean le Bel, who fortunately was not content simply to enjoy life. Instigated by his seigneur he set himself to write contemporary history, to tell "la pure veriteit de tout li fait entierement al manire de chroniques." With this view, he compiled two books of chronicles. And the chronicles of Jean le Bel were not the only literary monuments belonging to the castle of Beaumont. A hundred years before him Baldwin d'Avernes, the then seigneur, had caused to be written a book of chronicles or rather genealogies. It must therefore be remembered that when Froissart undertook his own chronicles he was not conceiving a new idea, but only following along familiar lines.

Some 20 m. from Beaumont stood the prosperous city of Valenciennes, possessed in the 14th century of important privileges and a flourishing trade, second only to places like Bruges or Ghent in influence, population and wealth. Beaumont, once her rival, now regarded Valenciennes as a place where the ambitious might seek for wealth or advancement, and among those who migrated thither was the father of Foissart. He appears from a single passage in his son's verses to have been a painter of armorial bearings. There was, it may be noted, already what may be called a school of painters at Valenciennes. Among them were Jean and Colin de Valenciennes and Andre Beau-Neveu, of whom Froissart says that he had not his equal in any country.

The date generally adopted for his birth is 1338. In after years Froissart pleased himself by recalling in verse the scenes and pursuits of his childhood. These are presented in vague generalities. There is nothing to show that he was unlike any other boys, and, unfortunately, it did not occur to him that a photograph of a schoolboy's life amid bourgeois surroundings would be to posterity quite as interesting as that faithful portraiture of courts and knights which he has drawn up in his _Chronicle_. As it is, we learn that he loved games of dexterity and skill rather than the sedentary amusements of chess and draughts, that he was beaten when he did not know his lessons, that with his companions he played at tournaments, and that he was always conscious--a statement which must be accepted with suspicion--that he was born

"Loer Dieu et servir le monde."

In any case he was born in a place, as well as at a time, singularly adapted to fill the brain of an imaginative boy. Valenciennes was then a city extremely rich in romantic associations. Not far from its walls was the western fringe of the great forest of Ardennes, sacred to the memory of Pepin, Charlemagne, Roland and Ogier. Along the banks of the Scheldt stood, one after the other, not then in ruins, but bright with banners, the gleam of armour, and the liveries of the men at arms, castles whose seigneurs, now forgotten, were famous in their day for many a gallant feat of arms. The castle of Valenciennes itself was illustrious in the romance of _Perceforest_. There was born that most glorious and most luckless hero, Baldwin, first emperor of Constantinople. All the splendour of medieval life was to be seen in Froissart's native city: on the walls of the Salle le Comte glittered--perhaps painted by his father--the arms and scutcheons beneath the banners and helmets of Luxembourg, Hainaut and Avesnes; the streets were crowded with knights and soldiers, priests, artisans and merchants; the churches were rich with stained glass, delicate tracery and precious carving; there were libraries full of richly illuminated manuscripts on which the boy could gaze with delight; every year there was the _fete_ of the _puy d'Amour de Valenciennes_, at which he would hear the verses of the competing poets; there were festivals, masques, mummeries and moralities. And, whatever there might be elsewhere, in this happy city there was only the pomp, and not the misery, of war; the fields without were tilled, and the harvests reaped, in security; the workman within plied his craft unmolested for good wage. But the eyes of the boy were turned upon the castle and not upon the town; it was the splendour of the knights which dazzled him, insomuch that he regarded and continued ever afterwards to regard a prince gallant in the field, glittering of apparel, lavish of largesse, as almost a god.

The moon, he says, rules the first four years of life; Mercury the next ten; Venus follows. He was fourteen when the last goddess appeared to him in person, as he tells us, after the manner of his time, and informed him that he was to love a lady, "belle, jone, et gente." Awaiting this happy event, he began to consider how best to earn his livelihood. They first placed him in some commercial position--impossible now to say of what kind--which he simply calls "la marchandise." This undoubtedly means some kind of buying and selling, not a handicraft at all. He very soon abandoned merchandise--"car vaut mieux science qu'argens"--and resolved on becoming a learned clerk. He then naturally began to make verses, like every other learned clerk. Quite as naturally, and still in the character of a learned clerk, he fulfilled the prophecy of Venus and fell in love. He found one day a demoiselle reading a book of romances. He did not know who she was, but stealing gently towards her, he asked her what book she was reading. It was the romance of _Cleomades_. He remarks the singular beauty of her blue eyes and fair hair, while she reads a page or two, and then--one would almost suspect a reminiscence of Dante--

"Adont laissames nous le lire."

He was thus provided with that essential for soldier, knight or poet, a mistress--one for whom he could write verses. She was rich and he was poor; she was nobly born and he obscure; it was long before she would accept the devotion, even of the conventional kind which Froissart offered her, and which would in no way interfere with the practical business of her life. And in this hopeless way, the passion of the young poet remaining the same, and the coldness of the lady being unaltered, the course of this passion ran on for some time. Nor was it until the day of Froissart's departure from his native town that she gave him an interview and spoke kindly to him, even promising, with tears in her eyes, that "Doulce Pensee" would assure him that she would have no joyous day until she should see him again.

He was eighteen years of age; he had learned all that he wanted to learn; he possessed the mechanical art of verse; he had read the slender stock of classical literature accessible; he longed to see the world. He must already have acquired some distinction, because, on setting out for the court of England, he was able to take with him letters of recommendation from the king of Bohemia and the count of Hainaut to Queen Philippa, niece of the latter. He was well received by the queen, always ready to welcome her own countrymen; he wrote ballades and virelays for her and her ladies. But after a year he began to pine for another sight of "la tres douce, simple, et quoie," whom he loved loyally. Good Queen Philippa, perceiving his altered looks and guessing the cause, made him confess that he was in love and longed to see his mistress. She gave him his _conge_ on the condition that he was to return. It is clear that the young clerk had already learned to ingratiate himself with princes.

The conclusion of his single love adventure is simply and unaffectedly told in his _Trettie de l'espinette amoureuse_. It was a passion conducted on the well-known lines of conventional love; the pair exchanged violets and roses, the lady accepted ballads; Froissart became either openly or in secret her recognized lover, a mere title of honour, which conferred distinction on her who bestowed it, as well as upon him who received it. But the progress of the amour was rudely interrupted by the arts of "Malebouche," or Calumny. The story, whatever it was, that Malebouche whispered in the ear of the lady led to a complete rupture. The _damoiselle_ not only scornfully refused to speak to her lover or acknowledge him, but even seized him by the hair and pulled out a handful. Nor would she ever be reconciled to him again. Years afterwards, when Froissart writes the story of his one love passage, he shows that he still takes delight in the remembrance of her, loves to draw her portrait, and lingers with fondness over the thought of what she once was to him.