Tous enclosed in Stone and Wood. 317 
by a luting of clay, shews how very small an aperture will admit mi- 
nute insects sufficient to maintain life. In the cell No. 5, where the glass 
was slightly cracked, the communication though small was obvious, but, 
in the cell No. 9, where the glass cover remained entire, and where it 
appears certain from the increased weight of the enclosed animal, that 
insects must have found admission, we have an example of these minute 
animals finding their way into a cell, to which great care had been taken 
to prevent any possibility of access. 
Admitting then that Toads are occasionally found in cavities of wood 
and stone with which there is no communication sufficiently large to allow 
the ingress and egress of the animal enclosed in them, we may, I think, 
find a solution of such phenomena in the habits of these reptiles, and of 
the insects which form their food. ‘The first effort of the young Toad, as 
soon as it has left its tad-pole state and emerged from the water, is to seek 
shelter in holes and crevices of rocks and trees. An individual, which, 
when young, may have thus entered a cavity by some very narrow 
aperture would find abundance of food by catching insects, which like 
itself seek shelter within such cavities, and may soon have increased so 
much in bulk as to render it impossible to go out again through the 
narrow aperture at which it entered. A small hole of this kind is very 
likely to be overlooked by common workmen who are the only people 
whose operations on stone and wood disclose cavities in the interior of 
such substances. In the case of Toads, Snakes and Lizards, that 
occasionally issue from stones that are broken in a quarry, or in 
sinking wells, and sometimes even from strata of coal at the bottom 
of a coal mine, the evidence is never perfect to shew that the reptiles 
were entirely enclosed in a solid rock; no examination is ever made 
until the reptile is first discovered by the breaking of the mass in 
which it was contained, and then it is too late to ascertain without carefully 
replacing every fragment (and in no case that IT have seen reported 
has this ever been done) whether or not there was any hole or crevice by 
which the animal may have entered the cavity from which it was extracted. 
Without previous examination it is almost impossible to prove that there 
was no such communication. In the case of rocks near the surface of 
the earth, and in stone quarries, reptiles find ready admission to holes and 
fissures. We havea notorious example of this kind in the Lizard found 
