found in 8i. John's Churchyard, Devizes. 



251 



Teeth of Sphaerodus gigas, natural size. 



the same stratum at Faringdon, where they have been deposited 

 under similar circumstances. 



Coated as they are with a brilliant natural enamel, these teeth 

 are really beautiful objects, and well suited for ornamental 



purposes. Their form is shown 

 in the woodcut. 



But besides their natural beauty, 

 a superstitious value was for- 

 merly attached to them : in the 

 dark ages, designing or ignorant 

 persons represented them to be 

 jewels from the head of the toad.^ 

 For many ages it was popularly 

 believed that this animal was pos- 

 sessed of a jewel which was engendered in its head, and hence arose 

 the name " Crapaudine " or " Toadstone." It is hardly necessary 

 to say that no such stones ever existed in the toad. 



There is an allusion to this belief in the following passage from 

 " As you like it,^'' 



*' Sweet are the uses of adversity, 

 "Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 

 "Wears yet a precious jewel in his head :" 



it is however scarcely probable that Shakespeare was a believer 

 in this superstition. 



Nichols, in his " Lapidary," says, " Some say this stone is 

 found in the head of an old toade ; others say that the old toade 

 must be laid upon the cloth that is red and it will belch it up, or 

 otherwise not : you may give a like credit to both these reports, 

 for as like truth is to be found in them as may possibly be. 

 Witness Anselmus Boetius in Lib. 2, in the chapter on this stone, 

 who saythe that to try this experiment, in his youth, he took an 

 old toade and laid it upon a red cloth, and watched it a whole 

 night to see it belch up his stone ; but after his long and tedious 



' " Ces fossiles etaient deja connus des polygraphes anciens, qui les ont decrits 

 sous les noms bizarres de Buffonites, et de Crapaudines, en affirmant que 

 c'etaient des yeux de crapauds petrifies." Agassis, Poissona Fossiles ii., 

 pt. 2, p. 240. 



