COURT ON THE FROG

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22907, 15 June 1936, Page 5

COURT ON THE FROG

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 is to be " flesh." The judge called it a " Res nullius—something that belongs to no one."

It was related that a man named Rene Choi ley went by night to a pool near Fouteroles, 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, Cholley declared: " I was not fishing. I maintain that a frog is not a fish at all. It 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 (Jays." 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 s 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 t,he genus Rana."]