with the exception of the greater part of South America and Australia. Some of the species are thoroughly aquatic and have fully webbed toes, others are terrestrial, except during the breeding season, others are adapted for burrowing, by means of the much-enlarged and sharp-edged tubercle at the base of the inner toe, whilst not a few have the tips of the digits dilated into disks by which they are able to climb on trees. In most of the older classifications great importance was attached to these physiological characters, and a number of genera were established which, owing to the numerous annectent forms which have since been discovered, must be abandoned. The arboreal species were thus associated with the true tree-frogs, regardless of their internal structure. We now know that such adaptations are of comparatively small importance, and cannot be utilized for establishing groups higher than genera in a natural or phylogenetic classification. The tree-frogs, Hylidae, with which the arboreal Ranidae were formerly grouped, show in their anatomical structure a close resemblance to the toads, Bufonidae, and are therefore placed far away from the true frogs, however great the superficial resemblance between them.
Some frogs grow to a large size. The bull-frog of the eastern United States and Canada, reaching a length of nearly 8 in. from snout to vent, long regarded as the giant of the genus, has been surpassed by the discovery of Rana guppyi (812 in.) in the Solomon Islands, and of Rana goliath (10 in.) in South Cameroon.
The family Ranidae embraces a large number of genera, some of which are very remarkable. Among these may be mentioned the hairy frog of West Africa, Trichobatrachus robustus, some specimens of which have the sides of the body and of the hind limbs covered with long villosities, the function of which is unknown, and its ally Gampsosteonyx batesi, in which the last phalanx of the fingers and toes is sharp, claw-like and perforates the skin. To this family also belong the Rhacophorus of eastern Asia, arboreal frogs, some of which are remarkable for the extremely developed webs between the fingers and toes, which are believed to act as a parachute when the frog leaps from the branches of trees (flying-frog of A. R. Wallace), whilst others have been observed to make aerial nests between leaves overhanging water, a habit which is shared by their near allies the Chiromantis of tropical Africa. Dimorphognathus, from West Africa, is the unique example of a sexual dimorphism in the dentition, the males being provided with a series of large sharp teeth in the lower jaw, which in the female, as in most other members of the family, is edentulous. The curious horned frog of the Solomon Islands, Ceratobatrachus guentheri, which can hardly be separated from the Ranidae, has teeth in the lower jaw in both sexes, whilst a few forms, such as Dendrobates and Cardioglossa, which on this account have been placed in a distinct family, have no teeth at all, as in toads. These facts militate strongly against the importance which was once attached to the dentition in the classification of the tailless batrachians.
FROG-BIT, in botany, the English name for a small floating
herb known botanically as Hydrocharis Morsus-Ranae, a member
of the order Hydrocharideae, a family of Monocotyledons. The
plant has rosettes of roundish floating leaves, and multiplies
like the strawberry plant by means of runners, at the end
of which new leaf-rosettes develop. Staminate and pistillate
flowers are borne on different plants; they have three small
green sepals and three broadly ovate white membranous petals.
The fruit, which is fleshy, is not found in Britain. The plant
occurs in ponds and ditches in England and is rare in Ireland.
FROGMORE, a mansion within the royal demesne of Windsor,
England, in the Home Park, 1 m. S.E. of Windsor Castle. It
was occupied by George III.’s queen, Charlotte, and later by
the duchess of Kent, mother of Queen Victoria, who died here
in 1861. The mansion, a plain building facing a small lake, has
in its grounds the mausoleum of the duchess of Kent and the
royal mausoleum. The first is a circular building surrounded
with Ionic columns and rising in a dome, a lower chamber within
containing the tomb, while in the upper chamber is a statue of the
duchess. There is also a bust of Princess Hohenlohe-Langenberg,
half-sister of Queen Victoria; and before the entrance is a
memorial erected by the queen to Lady Augusta Stanley (d.
1876), wife of Dean Stanley. The royal mausoleum, a cruciform
building with a central octagonal lantern, richly adorned within
with marbles and mosaics, was erected (1862–1870) by Queen
Victoria over the tomb of Albert, prince consort, by whose side
the queen herself was buried in 1901. There are also memorials
to Princess Alice and Prince Leopold in the mausoleum. To
the south of the mansion are the royal gardens and dairy.
FRÖHLICH, ABRAHAM EMANUEL (1796–1865), Swiss poet, was born on the 1st of February 1796 at Brugg in the canton of Aargau, where his father was a teacher. After studying theology at Zürich he became a pastor in 1817 and returned as teacher to his native town, where he lived for ten years. He was then appointed professor of the German language and literature in the cantonal school at Aarau, which post he lost, however, in the political quarrels of 1830. He afterwards obtained the post of teacher and rector of the cantonal college, and was also appointed assistant minister at the parish church. He died at Baden in Aargau on the 1st of December 1865. His works are—170 Fabeln (1825); Schweizerlieder (1827); Das Evangelium St Johannis, in Liedern (1830); Elegien an Wieg’ und Sarg (1835); Die Epopöen; Ulrich Zwingli (1840); Ulrich von Hutten (1845); Auserlesene Psalmen und geistliche Lieder für die Evangelisch-reformirte Kirche des Cantons Aargau (1844); Über den Kirchengesang der Protestanten (1846); Trostlieder (1852); Der Junge Deutsch-Michel (1846); Reimsprüche aus Staat, Schule, und Kirche (1820). An edition of his collected works, in 5 vols., was published at Frauenfeld in 1853. Fröhlich is best known for his two heroic poems, Ulrich Zwingli and Ulrich von Hutten, and especially for his fables, which have been ranked with those of Hagedorn, Lessing and Gellert.
See the Life by R. Fäsi (Zürich, 1907).
FROHSCHAMMER, JAKOB (1821–1893), German theologian
and philosopher, was born at Illkofen, near Regensburg, on the 6th of January 1821. Destined by his parents for the Roman Catholic priesthood, he studied theology at Munich, but felt an ever-growing attraction to philosophy. Nevertheless, after much hesitation, he took what he himself calls the most mistaken step of his life, and in 1847 entered the priesthood. His keenly logical intellect, and his impatience of authority where it clashed with his own convictions, quite unfitted him for that unquestioning obedience which the Church demanded. It was only after open defiance of the bishop of Regensburg that he obtained permission to continue his studies at Munich. He at first devoted himself more especially to the study of the history of dogma, and in 1850 published his Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte, which was placed on the Index Expurgatorius. But he felt that his real vocation was philosophy, and after holding for a short time an extraordinary professorship of theology, he became professor of philosophy in 1855. This appointment he owed chiefly to his work, Über den Ursprung der menschlichen Seelen (1854), in which he maintained that the human soul was not implanted by a special creative act in each case, but was the result of a secondary creative act on the part of the parents: that soul as well as body, therefore, was subject to the laws of heredity. This was supplemented in 1855 by the controversial Menschenseele und Physiologie. Undeterred by the offence which these works gave to his ecclesiastical superiors, he published in 1858 the Einleitung in die Philosophie und Grundriss der Metaphysik, in which he assailed the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, that philosophy was the handmaid of theology. In 1861 appeared Über die Aufgabe der Naturphilosophie und ihr Verhältnis zur Naturwissenschaft, which was, he declared, directed against the purely mechanical conception of the universe, and affirmed the necessity of a creative Power. In the same year he published Über die Freiheit der Wissenschaft, in which he maintained the independence of science, whose goal was truth, against authority, and reproached the excessive respect for the latter in the Roman Church with the insignificant part played by the German Catholics in literature and philosophy. He was denounced by the pope himself in an apostolic brief of the 11th of December 1862, and students of theology were forbidden to attend his lectures.
