36 



possession of Mr. Nye. I then discovered to my surprise that 

 the object in the flint was a mummied or desiccated toad covered 

 with a sHght deposit of chalky matter. 



I purchased the specimen from Mr. Nye on the under- 

 standing that it should be presented to the Brighton Museum 

 (Mr. Henry Willett's Collection), and that his name should be 

 associated with its discovery. 



The mummied body of the toad, which is 2^ inches long, 

 appears to fit in with certain irregularities in the floor of the 

 cavity, the skin having probably sunk into them during the time 

 when the body was drying. 



I find, on examination of the nodule, that the hollow had 

 probably once been occupied by a sponge around which the flint 

 had formed. The sponge had decayed leaving a cavity within 

 the flint, and the decay of its stem had left a round hole at the 

 lower or pointed end of the stone. I found on piercing the hole 

 that it was filled only with chalk (diameter of hole half an inch). 

 Through this hole the animal when small must have crawled into 

 the cavity. A day must soon have come when the toad could no 

 longer get out, and it could only have subsisted upon such insects 

 and other small organisms as came within reach of its tongue. 

 How long it remained there cannot be estimated, but it probably 

 did not long survive the silting up of the hole. 



Experiments have shown that the growth of these animals is 

 greatly accelerated by abundance of food and retarded by want 

 of it. Indeed, it seems that under certain conditions they may 

 even shrink in size ; but without food there can be no real 

 increase in substance. Tiie amount of food reaching the toad 

 also cannot be estimated ; much would depend on the situation 

 of the stone when the animal was entombed. Supposing, for 

 instance, that the nodule was protruding from its bed in the 

 chalk at the bottom of a long crevice, down which the toad had 

 fallen, the supply of insects would have been very small. 



On the other hand, it may have been then situate on 

 the surface, in the vicinity of some decaying or other matter 

 which might have attracted insects and other organisms to the 

 vicinity of the orifice of the nodule. 



There is another problem to which I should like to draw 

 the attention of naturalists, viz. : as to whether the fetid and 

 acrid exudations from the skin of toads may not attract flies, 

 insects, and other organisms towards these creatures, so as to 

 cause them to come within range of their long, elastic tongues ? 



Again, a toad has a peculiar method of softly scratching the 

 ground with its hind claws when preparing to strike its prey ; 

 which noise or vibration may, perhaps, be a cause of attraction to 

 certain insects. Such factors as these, or the mere perception 

 of the presence of moisture by insects, &c., may have induced 

 them to enter the hole in this nodule (or in other cases the 



