32 On the Vitality of Toads enclosed in Stone and Wood. 



merating several authentic and well attested cases ; these, how- 

 ever, amount to no more than a repetition of the facts so often 

 stated and admitted to be true, viz. that torpid reptiles occur in 

 cavities of stone, and at the depth of many feet in soil and earth ; 

 but, they state not any thing to disprove the possibility of a 

 small aperture, by which these cavities may have had communi- 

 cation with the external surface, and insects have been admitted. 



The attention of the discoverer is always directed more to the 

 toad than to the minutiae of the state of the cavity in which it 

 was contained. 



In the Literary Gazette of March 12. 1831, p. 169, there 

 is a very interesting account of the habits of a tame male toad, 

 that was domesticated and carefully observed during almost two 

 years by Mr F. C. Husenbeth. During two winters, from 

 November to March, he ate no food, though he did not become 

 torpid, but grew thin and moved much less than at other times. 

 During the winter of 1828, he gradually lost his appetite and 

 gradually recovered it. He was well fed during two summers, 

 and after the end of the second winter, on the 29th of March, 

 1829, he was found dead. His death was apparently caused 

 by an unusually long continuance of severe weather, which 

 seemed to exhaust him before his natural appetite returned. 

 He could not have died from starvation, for the day before his 

 death he refused a lively fly. 



Dr Townson also, in his tracts on Natural History, (London 

 1799), records a series of observations which he made on tame 

 frogs, and also on some toads ; these were directed chiefly 

 to the very absorbent power of the skin of these reptiles, and 

 show that they take in and reject liquids, through their skin 

 alone, by a rapid process of absorption and evaporation, — a frog 

 absorbing sometimes in half an hour as much as half its own 

 weight, and in a few hours the whole of its own weight of wa- 

 ter, and nearly as rapidly giving it off* when placed in any posi- 

 tion that is warm and removed from moisture. Dr T. contends 

 that as the frog tribe never drink water, this fluid must be sup- 

 plied by means of absorption through the skin. Both frogs and 

 toads have a Jarge bladder, which is often found full of water; 

 " whatever this fluid may be, (he says), it is as pure as distilled 

 water and equally tasteless ; this I assert as well of that of the 

 toad which I have often tasted, as that of frogs."" 



