Royal Society, 4M 



First. Toads deposit spawn in cellars and young toads are after- 

 wards observed. 



Last summer several masses of spawn were procured from my 

 cellar, having been found deposited amongst decaying potatoes, &c., 

 and subsequently young toads were noticed. The cellar is free 

 from water, and at a considerable distance from any brook. 



Secondly. Young toads are observed about hot-beds. 



In the kitchen-garden at Highfield House (which is entirely walled 

 round) young toads have been noticed about the cucumber- and 

 melon- beds. The gardeners have been in the habit of bringing 

 toads to these beds to destroy the insects ; these have continued 

 amongst the warm damp straw all summer. It is after these beds 

 have remained three or four months that the young ones have been 

 noticed. Toads would have to travel nearly half a mile to reach 

 this garden from the brook or lake, and also to mount a steep hill, 

 besides taking the opportunity of coming through the door. Toads 

 so small are not seen in any other part of the gardens. 



Thirdly. Young toads and frogs observed in abundance at the sum- 

 mit of another hill, whilst quite small. 



During the past summer, especially in the month of July, very 

 many young toads and frogs were seen amongst the strawberry 

 plants, apparently from a week to a month old. These might pos- 

 sibly have travelled from the brook a few hundred yards distant ; 

 yet it is strange, that with the exception of these beds, no young 

 toads could be found elsewhere in the garden. A number of full- 

 grown toads are mostly to be seen about these beds. 



Fourthly. Young frogs dug out of the ground in the month of 

 January. 



In digging in the garden amongst the strawberry-beds (near 

 where so many toads were observed last summer) in the middle of 

 January in the present year, a nest of about a score young frogs 

 were upturned. These were apparently three or four weeks old. 

 This ground had been previously dug in the month of August and 

 many strawberry plants buried; it was amongst a mass of these 

 plants in a state of partial decomposition that these young ones were 

 observed. 



Fifthly. Young frogs are bred in cellars where there is no water for 

 tadpoles. 



In mentioning this subject to Mr. Joseph Sidebotham of Man- 

 chester (an active botanist), he informed me that young frogs, and 

 in fact frogs of all sizes, were to be seen in his cellar amongst de- 

 caying dahlia tubers. The smallest of them were only about half 

 the ordinary size of the young frog when newly developed from the 

 tadpole. He further stated that there was no water in the cellar, 

 and no means of young frogs entering, except by first coming into 

 the kitchen, a mode of entry, if not impossible, highly improbable. 

 Mr. Sidebotham never found any spawn. 



It seems probable from the above, that frogs are occasionally 

 born alive in situations where no water can be found for the spawn 

 to be deposited in, and that toads are either reproduced in the same 



