The examiner., 1882-02-18
The Horned Frog.


 The horned frog is native of Texas and lower California, where he is found inhabiting the sandy soil of the prairies and the pockets of the small boy.
 The horned frog is really not frog at all, but lizard travelling incognito. He is shorter and broader than the or. dinary lizard, gray in color. with bright spots and horny spikes all oyer his back, and on his head two real horns about half an inch in length. He is not as big as bull, but you can take him by the horns all the same.
 Although the horned frog does not live in a restaurant he eats about as many flies as if he did; in fact, he lives on flies; that is his principal pursuit. When he eats @ fly he knows what he is doing, and that is where he has n great advantage over the regular restaurant boarder. We have seen horned frogs used as fy-traps in grocers' windows. The fly that succeeds in attracting the attention of horned frog can never be used afterward.
 Tho horned frog is dry, cleauly little reptile, and seems to have no vices. AS he never gets drunk, Eor eats hot biscuits, nor runs newspaper, he is hard to kill. He will live six months without food and be good natured all the time.
 He travels great deal, but nev CT brags about it. We knew one that left Texas, and three weeks afterward was registered in a town in the south ot England. in the enjoyment of fine health. He travelled cheaply, too and although he did not go on an edi- torial excursion, yet his travelling ex- penses, including hotel bills, fees to walters and other incidentals, only amounted to ten cents, this being the value of the postage stamps rasted on the paper collar box he was mailed in. Large quantities of him were formerly exiled to the Northern States and elsewhere, through the medium of the postof1ice department. The postoffice authorities did not object much to the horned frog, but after awhile they found that tarantulas, centipedes and an oc- casional rattlesnake were to Do found among the letters and other mail mat ter. The paper boxes in which these little playthings were forwarded fre- quently got broken, and the foundling ar antula would occasionally bear away a postoffice clerk to the silent tomb. The consequence was that the clerks took to dis ributing and asserting mails with long poles. This occupied too much time, and when they found any specimens of native Texans, instead of picking them up, placing them in the boxes and re-addressing them. they killed them in their tracks. About this time life insurance companies began to put extra clauses in their poli- cies, requiring the policy holders to abstain from working in powder mills, from stealing ponies and from
 
 which caused the postoffico department to pass constitutional amendment re- quiring the sender of such insects to kill them before mailing them, as the labor of attending to the matter took up too much of the time Of the em- ployes. The horned frog-in which there is no more malice than there is in caulifower-hadto to suffer for the sins of the tarantula, the centipede, the rat tlesnake and other representative char acters.
 Two out of every possible three schoolboys in Texas carry few horned frogs alive in their pockets during the spring season-for what reason or pur- pose I am unable to state. But who can give reason for half the things that small boy treasures about his Sif9ings.