Ɛpsilon

From Frank Hurndall   10 September 1881

1, Ashfield, | Wavertree. | nr Liverpool

Septr 10th 1881

Sir/

I take the liberty of addressing you upon the subject of a frog, found in a seam of coal; thinking it may interest you to hear it, should you not already be aware of the incident, for it is alleged that such reptiles cannot live without food or air.

Some years ago a frog, measuring about 112 inches long, was found, alive, in a lump of coal, taken from a colliery in South Wales, & upon examination was found to have a mark denoting where its mouth shd. be which was closed, & was in appearance similar to a healed cut upon the human body, but was otherwise, to all appearance perfectly, formed— It was, subsequently, placed in a glass bottle & hermetically sealed up but died a short time afterwards. The cause of death not being discovered.1

It was a mystery to all who saw it, as to how, & for how long, it had lived, having no natural means of taking food, & the depth it was found at, made it doubtful, as to its obtaining air: hence it was generally supposed, it had lived without either.2—a statement which if it could be proved, would be of interest to you, perhaps, as well as to other naturalists

Trusting you will pardon the liberty I take in addressing you, & hoping the incident may interest you. | I am, Sir, | Yr. Obedient Servant | Frank Hurndall

Professor Darwin.

1
The live frog discovered in a lump of coal in Monmouthshire, Wales, had been exhibited at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. Frank Buckland, in common with many other men of science, had poured scorn on the idea that frogs and toads found entombed in this way were as old as the rocks in which they were discovered (‘The frog in the block of coal’, The Times, 16 September 1862, p. 7). William Erasmus Darwin had discussed the 1862 debate about the longevity of encased frogs with CD (see Correspondence vol. 24, Supplement, letter from W. E. Darwin, [5 October 1862] and n. 5).
2
This was just one of several discoveries purporting to show that frogs and toads could survive for long periods encased in rock, despite William Buckland’s experiments, carried out in the 1820s, which showed that toads could not survive entombment for more than a year. See Gordon 1894, p. 89.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13328,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13328