394 JUNIOR Naturalist Monthly. 



But, you say, I cannot afford to hire any help. Perhaps this is true. 

 Roys do not have a great deal of money and it is rather a difficult thing 

 to get help unless you can pay them well. Now I can tell you about a 

 little farm hand that will save you a great deal of work. He is quiet, 

 makes no trouble, is^idustrious. and never asks for a dcdlar when Satur- 

 day night comes. 



Perhaps you will laugh when 1 tell you that this industrious and 

 accommodating farm hand is a hop toad, — a quiet, plain little creature 

 that some of you have treated carelessly and some of you, I fear, have 

 abused. But you would never have abused him, nor would you have 

 passed him by without notice, if you had but realized how much good 

 this one little fellow does in helping the farmer and the gardener. In 

 fact, I would not be surprised if you boys would feel like taking off your 

 hat to him. 



Did you say the hop toad is ugly? I do not know about that. It 

 seems to me he looks just the way he ought to for his purpose in life. 

 If he did not look like a clod of earth, many enemies would be able to 

 see him readily and take his life. Then, too, he cares only for live food. 

 Insects frequently alight on this bit of earth, as he seems to be, and in 

 that way he can get his dinner wdthout much effort. It is indeed a good 

 thing for the toad that he looks so much like the soil on which he lives. 



You should have seen a nice old hop toad that was in a school that 

 I visited during the past year. This toad was a great pet. At first, some 

 of the girls would not handle him because they had been told that he 

 would give them warts, but they soon learned that this was an untrue 

 statement. The children were warned that if handled carelessly a poison- 

 ous substance might come from the toad, but they did not pay much 

 attention to it, and no one was poisoned by it. The young folks all 

 paid the toad a great deal of attention. They would take turns holding 

 him up to the windows where he would catch flies as fast as they 

 appeared. 



But our little farm helper will eat other things besides flies. He will 

 eat ants, cut-worms, thousand-legged worms, tent caterpillars, ground 

 beetles, ]\Iay beetles, wire-worm beetles, weevils, many kinds of cater- 

 pillars, grasshoppers, sow bugs, potato beetles, snails, and many other 

 things ; and he has a very good appetite. Now you can see why he could 

 be very helpful to you among yovir garden plants. 



In order that you may have some toads in your garden, I am going 

 to make a suggestion. It is not an easy thing to go into your neighbor's 

 yard and take a toad over into yours, because these little creatures seem 

 to have a homing instinct, and when once accustomed to a place, they are 

 likely to return. I w^ould suggest, therefore, that every young person 



