316 Rev. Dr. Buckland on the Vitality of 
unnatural, so that they were in an unhealthy and somewhat meagre state 
at the time of their imprisonment. We can therefore scarcely argue 
with certainty from the death of all these individuals within two years, as 
to the duration of life which might have been maintained had they retired 
spontaneously and fallen into the torpor of their natural hybernization 
in good bodily condition. 
The results of our experiments amount to this; all the Toads both 
large and small inclosed in sandstone, and the smal! Toads in the lime- 
stone also, were dead at the end of thirteen months. Before the expiration 
of the second year, all the large ones also were dead ; these were examined 
several times during the second year through the glass covers of the cells, 
but without removing them to admit air; they appeared always awake 
with their eyes open, and never in a state of torpor, their meagreness 
increasing at each interval in which they were examined until at length 
they were found dead; those two also which had gained an accession of 
weight at the end of the first year and were then carefully closed up 
again were emaciated and dead before the expiration of the second year. 
At the same time that these Toads were enclosed in stone, four other 
Toads of middling size were enclosed in three holes cut for this purpose 
on the North side of the trunk of an apple tree ; two being placed in the 
largest cell, and each of the others ina single cell; the cells were nearly 
circular, about five inches deep and three inches in diameter; they were 
carefully closed up with a plug of wood so as to exclude access of insects, 
and apparently were air-tight; when examined at the end of a year, 
every one of the Toads was dead and their bodies were decayed. 
From the fatal result of the experiments made in the small cells cut in 
the apple tree, and the block of compact sandstone, it seems to follow 
that Toads cannot live a year excluded totally from atmospheric air, and 
from the experiments in the larger cells within the block of oolitic lime- 
stone, it seems also probable that they cannot survive two years entirely 
excluded from food ; we may therefore conclude that there is a want of 
sufficiently minute and accurate observation in those so frequently recorded 
cases, where Toads are said to be found alive within blocks of stone and 
wood, in cavities that had no communication whatever with the external 
air. The fact of my two Toads having increased in weight at the end of 
a year, notwithstanding the care that was taken to enclose them perfectly 
