106 BUPONIDE. 



the Toad. Condemned by common consent as a disgusting, 

 odious, and venomous reptile, the proverbial emblem of all 

 that is malicious and hateful in the hmnan character, it is 

 placed under universal ban, and treated as an outlaw both by 

 man and boy throughout the country. Should I be able, 

 by the following history of its habits and manners, to show 

 that it is, on the contrary, highly useful, perfectly harmless, 

 inoffensive, and even timid, and susceptible of no inconsider- 

 able degree of discriminating attachment lo those who treat 

 it with kindness, it is hoped that some few individuals may 

 be thus rescued from those barbarous acts of cruelty to which 

 the species is almost everywhere subjected. The mistaken 

 notions to which I have alluded are indeed pardonable in the 

 ignorant and uneducated ; but that one professing to be an 

 observer and an admirer of the works of nature, should have 

 suffered his prejudices to dictate such a violent and false 

 philippic against this harmless creature, as the following 

 passage from Pennant, is not easily to be accounted for, and 

 scarcely to be forgiven : — 



He calls it " The most deformed and hideous of all ani- 

 mals ; the body broad ; the back flat, and covered with a 

 pimply dusky hide ; the belly large, swagging, and swelling 

 out ; the legs short ; its pace laborious and crawling ; its re- 

 treat gloomy and filthy : in short, its general appearance such 

 as to strike with disgust and horror." The whole of his 

 account teems with expressions of the same kind ; and it 

 Avould be difficult to find a more striking instance of the in- 

 fluence of prejudice in the mind of any professed admirer of 

 nature, or a more unpleasing example of partial misrepresen- 

 tation. The true lover of nature, on the contrary, who, in 

 the simplicity and singleness of heart which always belong to 

 that character, seeks even in the less attractive of her works for 

 those proofs of wisdom and beneficence by which they are all 



