SOME FACTS AND FICTIONS OF ZOOLOGY. 107 



nation of the evidence presented, will be inclined to doubt greatly the 

 justification for inserting the adjective "solid"; for usually no evi- 

 dence whatever is forthcoming as to the state of the rock prior to its 

 removal. No previous examination of the rock is or can be made, 

 from the circumstance that no interest can possibly attach to its con- 

 dition until its removal reveals the apparent wonder it contained, in 

 the shape of the live toad. And we rarely, if ever, find mention of 

 any examination of the rock being made subsequently to the discovery. 

 Hence, a first and grave objection may be taken to the validity of the 

 supposition that the rock was solid, and it may be fairly urged that on 

 this supposition the whole question turns and depends. For, if the 

 rock can not be proved to have been impermeable to and barred against 

 the entrance of living creatures, the objector may proceed to show the 

 possibility of the toad having gained admission, under certain notable 

 circumstances, to its prison-house. 



The frog or toad in its young state, and having just entered upon 

 its terrestrial life, is a small creature, which could, with the utmost 

 ease, wriggle into crevices and crannies of a size which would almost 

 preclude such apertures being noticed at all. Gaining access to a 

 roomier crevice or nook within, and finding there a due supply of 

 air, along with a dietary consisting chiefly of insects, the animal 

 would grow with tolerable rapidity, and would increase to such an 

 extent that egress through its aperture of entrance would become an 

 impossibility. Next, let us suppose that the toleration of the toad's 

 system to starvation and a limited supply of air is taken into account, 

 together with the fact that these creatures will hibernate during each 

 winter, and thus economize, as it were, their vital activity and 

 strength ; and after the animal has thus existed for a year or two no 

 doubt under singularly hard conditions let us imagine that the rock 

 is split up by the wedge and lever of the excavator ; we can then readi- 

 ly enough account for the apparently inexplicable story of " the toad 

 in the rock." " There is the toad and here is the solid rock," say the 

 gossips. "There is an animal which has singular powers of sustaining 

 life under untoward conditions, and which, in its young state, could 

 have gained admittance to the rock through a mere crevice," says the 

 naturalist in reply. Doubtless, the great army of the unconvinced may 

 still believe in the tale as told them, for the weighing of evidence and 

 the placing pros and cons in fair contrast are not tasks of congenial or 

 wonted kind in the ordinary run of life. Some people there will be 

 who will believe in the original solid rock and its toad, despite the 

 assertion of the geologist that the earliest fossils of toads appear in 

 almost the last-formed rocks, and that a live toad in rocks of very 

 ancient age presuming, according to the popular belief, that the ani- 

 mal was inclosed when the rock was formed would be as great an 

 anomaly and wonder as the mention as an historical fact of an express- 

 train or the telegraph in the days of the patriarchs. The reasonable 





