LAW’S DECISION

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 June 1936, Page 12

LAW’S DECISION

THE COURT ON THE PROG. What is a frog? This question recently exercised legal and scientific brains at the Court of Appeal at Besancon, in Eastern France, says the “Daily Mail.” Some witnesses said the frog is a fish. Gourmets, thinking of its succulent legs, declared it to be “flesh.” The Judge called it a “Res nullius — something that belongs to no-one.” It was related that a man named Rene Cholley went by night to a pool near Fourteroles, and began catching frogs by raking them from the mud. He had taken five when a gendarme tapped him on the shoulder and told him he would be summoned for “fishing on private property without permission.”

When the case came before the Lower Court, Chollej' declared: "I was not fishing. 1 maintain that a frog is not a fish at all. ft is an ordinary animal. It comes out of the mud.” The Magistrate replied: “All creatures that go into the water are fish. We grant you that a frog has legs, and the view of science may be that it is an ordinary animal and not a fish. The law makes no such distinction.

"You will go to prison for six days.” Cholley appealed against the sentence. Armed with authoritative statements by zoologists and gourmets, his counsel argued for an hour and a-half to show that frog-catching was not fishing.

The Judge then gave his ruling. “The frog is neither a fish nor a domestic animal,” he declared. “By law such a creature is not possessed by the owner of the property on which it rests. Thus, unlike a fish, it may be taken by whomsoever wishes to take it. “The defendant was, therefore, not fishing, and will be acquitted.” Thus is the frog’s status well and truly defined. Or is it? (According to Murray’s English Dictionary, a frog is “a tailless amphibious animal of the genus Rana.”)