ENGLISH VS. FRENCH—PURSUIT OF BULL-FROGS UNDER DIFFICULTIES—TRUTH STRANGER THAN FICTION.

Although the English were the oldest inhabitants, it would seem they were not to hold their new possessions undisputed.

The fame of the fledgeling continent spread abroad, and people all over the world packed up their loins and girdled their traveling bags for a journey hither. Even France was suddenly seized with the emigrating fever, and soon became England’s principal rival in the new country.

She had heard of the American bull-frog as being the largest in the world, and ere 86long the banks of the Mississippi from its source to the Gulf were studded with huts whose owners had left their homes in sunny France in quest of frogs and freedom in a foreign clime.

Perched on yonder oscillating snag in midstream, or wading waist deep in the dismal bayou, armed with fishing tackle, his bronzed forehead furrowed with care and his hook baited with red flannel, the sanguine Gaul sought to tempt the sonorous bull-frog from his native lair. Too often, alas! he surprised the aggressive alligator in his native lair, fatally mistaking him for a first-class bull-frog of some rare species. Many an unwary Frenchman was taken in thus, but frogs were ............