COMMON TOAD. 121 



The reproduction of the Toad is in all essential points 

 similar to that of the Frog. The ova are in a similar man- 

 ner impregnated during their passage, and their immersion 

 in water is equally necessary for the developement of the 

 embryo. But instead of being expelled in a mass, they 

 are arranged in a double series, placed alternately, and 

 perfectly regular. The jelly-like mass in which the em- 

 bryos are enveloped, forms a continuous line about the 

 eighth or sixth of an inch in thickness, and extending to 

 the length of three or four feet. The ova are deposited 

 in the spring, about a fortnight later than those of the 

 Frog, and it is not until the approach of autumn that the 

 young ones, having cast off their Tadpole form, come to 

 seek their food on the land. The Tadpole is smaller and 

 blacker in all the stages of its growth than that of the 

 Frog ; but there are no other peculiarities which are at 

 all popularly interesting. 



The stories of Toads having been found in the very sub- 

 stance of the wood of a tree, and in the midst of a solid and 

 hard rock, are too numerous, and too generally asserted and 

 believed, to be passed over here, although I have to regret 

 that, after many and urgent inquiries, and the examination 

 of several asserted cases of that kind, I am unable to throw 

 any light upon this doubtful and mysterious question. 

 Some years since I had a Toad sent me by a person of the 

 highest credit, with the assurance that it had been taken 

 alive out of a mass of indurated clay, of great depth, and 

 that it had died immediately after being exposed to the 

 air. But this case, like most, if not all, others of the 

 same kind, is liable to the objection that the Toad most 

 probably fell into the hollow where the men were at work, 

 and was taken up by them in ignorance of the mode in 

 which it had come there. Numerous experiments have 



