Another proof may be found in the presence of the edible frog of the
Continent at Foulmire, on the edge of the Cambridge Fans. It is a
moot point still with some, whether he was not put there by man. It
is a still stronger argument against his being indigenous, that he is
never mentioned as an article of food by the mediaeval monks, who
would have known--Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, as many of them were-
-that he is as dainty as ever was a spring chicken. But if he be
indigenous, his presence proves that once he could either hop across
the Straits of Dover, or swim across the German Ocean.

But there can be no doubt of the next proof--the presence in the Fens
(where he is now probably extinct) and in certain spots in East
Anglia, which I shall take care not to mention, of that exquisite
little bird the 'Bearded Tit' (Calamophilus biarmicus). Tit he is
none; rather, it is said, a finch, but connected with no other
English bird. His central home is in the marshes of Russia and
Prussia; his food the mollusks which swarm among the reed-beds where
he builds; and feeding on those from reed-bed to reed bed, all across
what was once the German Ocean, has come the beautiful little bird
with long tail, orange tawny plumage, and black moustache, which
might have been seen forty years ago in hundreds on ever reed-rond of
the Fen.

One more proof--for it is the heaping up of facts, each minute by
itself, which issues often in a sound and great result. In draining
Wretham Mere, in Norfolk, not so very far from the Fens, in the year
1856 there were found embedded in the peat moss (which is not the
Scotch and Western Sphagnum palustre, but an altogether different
moss, Hypnum fluitans), remains of an ancient lake-dwelling,