174 ANURA CHAP. 



bottomed terrarium. Being kept during my absence in wringing 

 wet moss, which became fouled by their own excretions, they 

 contracted a mysterious disease from which they never recovered. 

 They are rather averse to wet surroundings, and except during 

 the short pairing season they live in cool, shady places, pre- 

 ferably with just a little dampness. Occasionally they take a 

 soaking bath. One specimen, living in the garden, repaired 

 during the hot and dry summer nights to a standpipe in the 

 garden, enjoying the occasional drips of water. 



Considering the amount of snails and other noxious creatures 

 destroyed by them during their regular nocturnal hunts, toads 

 are eminently useful creatures. Nevertheless, they suffer much 

 through the stupid superstition of people who ought to know 

 better. It is difficult to find a gentle, absolutely harmless and 

 useful creature that is more maligned than the European toad. 

 It brings ill-luck to the house, the " slimy toad " spits venom, sucks 

 the cows' udders and after that destroys their power of giving 

 milk ; it poisons the milk in the cellar, and a certain builder's 

 horse, which was grazing in the grounds of the Cambridge 

 Museums, and died there from a large concrement obstructing 

 its bowels, was solemnly declared to have swallowed one of my 

 toads. Silly superstitions, owing to faulty, or rather entire want 

 of, observation ! The toad is not slimy, but dry ; it is often 

 found in buildings, where it keeps down the woodlice ; it cannot 

 suck, nor does it drink at all ; it does not spit venom, but 

 becomes covered with milky white and very strong poison when 

 in acute agony, for instance when trodden upon ; and unless the 

 big skin-glands be forcibly squeezed, there will be no squirting. 

 Therefore, leave it alone, or put down food on its evening beat, 

 and it will soon come to know and to recognise its friends. 



The Common Toad can exist without food for a long time, 

 provided the locality is cool and damp, but it wastes away almost 

 to skin and bones. In order to disprove the persistently crop- 

 ping up fable and sensational newspaper-accounts of toads having 

 been discovered immured in buildings, where they were supposed 

 to have lived for many years, Frank Buckland put a dozen 

 specimens into separate holes bored in a block of porous lime- 

 stone, covered them up tightly with a glass plate and buried 

 the block a yard deep in the soil. A second dozen were treated 

 similarly, but were put into a block of dense sandstone. After a 



