28 Rev. Dr Buckland on the Vitality of 



When they were first examined in December 1826, not only 

 were all the small toads dead, but the larger ones appeared 

 much emaciated, with the two exceptions above mentioned. We 

 have already stated that these probably owed their increased 

 weight to the insects which had found access to the cells and 

 become their food. 



The death of every individual of every, size in the smaller 

 cells of compact sandstone, appears to have resulted from a de- 

 ficiency in the supply of air, in consequence of the smallness of 

 the cells, and the impermeable nature of the stone ; the larger 

 volume of air originally enclosed in the cells of the limestone, 

 and the porous nature of this stone itself (permeable as it is 

 slowly by water and probably also by air) seems to have favour- 

 ed the duration of life to the animals enclosed in them without 

 food. 



It should be noticed that there is a defect in these experi- 

 ments, arising from the treatment of the twenty-four toads be- 

 fore they were enclosed in the blocks of stone. They were shut 

 up and buried on the 26th of November, but the greater num- 

 ber of them had been caught more than two months before that 

 time, and had been imprisoned altogether in a cucumber frame 

 placed on common garden earth, where the supply of food to so 

 many individuals was probably scanty, and their confinement 

 unnatural, so that they were in an unhealthy and somewhat 

 meagre state at the time of their imprisonment. We can there- 

 fore scarcely argue with certainty from the death of all these 

 individuals within two years, as to the duration of life which 

 might have been maintained had they retired spontaneously and 

 fallen into the torpor of their natural hybernization in good 

 bodily condition. 



The results of our experiments amount to this ; all the toads 

 both large and small inclosed in sandstone, and the small toads 

 in the limestone also, were dead at the end of thirteen months. 

 Before the expiration of the second year, all the large ones also 

 were dead ; these were examined several times during the second 

 year through the glass covers of the cells, but without removing 

 them to admit air; they appeared always awake with their eyes 

 open, and never in a state of torpor, their meagreness increasing 

 at each interval in which they were' examined, until at length 

 they were found dead ; those two, also, which had gained an ac- 



