- ll - 



uonk^ys. The sane x^oison is used by dealers to produce y^ll>)v; feathers on 

 the Ai-azon e;recn p-arrots. ' Th( blue and ^^reen feathers of th.„ }i^ad and neck 

 are ..ducked out, and these area-j are then rubbed with the back of a living; 

 fro^,-. Tilaen the feathers grow out again they are a yellowish tint, instead 

 of green or blue. 



The venoms of batrachiai.s , like those of snakes, produce fatal results 

 only when introduced into the circulatory system. 



TItADITIONS AMD LEGENDS 



The toad is not an attractive animal and it has always besn the object 

 of c-Lirious beliefs or snipers tit ions. Small boys believe that if one is 

 killed and turned on its back there will be rain before night. For ages the 

 general public has held to the belief that warts were produced by handling 

 toads. Other traditions credit the toad with the power of poisoning infants 

 with ite breath; of bringing .p:ood fortune to the ho-use in the n^\/-madc collar 

 of wnich one is found; of curir.g children of stammering if rubbed on the back 

 of the neck; and of causing a cow to go dry or give bloody milk, if she 

 accidentally kills a toad while being driven homo from the pasture. The works 

 of the early writers on nat.a-al history teem with vague unsubstantiated 

 accounts of the venomous qualities of the breath and sputum of the toad, the 

 medicinal value of toad skins for treating certain ailments, and the valu/ible 

 toadstone or jewel to be foimd in its head. 



POOD HABITS 



The coraiTion toad is chiefly torreatrial eves' tno-ugi at certain seasons 

 of the year it is f o md in th^ vicinity of, or floating in shallow streams, 

 ponds, or temporary ,jjo1s of water. It is more or less crepuscular. In 

 capturing various forms of animal life it sliows that dead or motionless food 

 is of little interest. Only moving objects, apparently, make any impression 

 on its sensory apparatus, but motion perceived, the toad will refuse no 

 insect, spider, milliped, or snail which it can swa,llow. A toad's tj.ngue is 

 attached at the front end of the mouth, and is free behind. It is thus an 

 organ ospecially adapted for flinging forward and capturing insects and other 

 active forms of animal life. Frequently objects are accidentally swallowed 

 which have no direct food value, such as the iieedlcs of various coniferotis tree 

 Toads have even swallowed 'sr^all marbles v?hich were rolled in frjnt of them, 

 and small boys have many times fed toads with burning uiatch heads, which the 

 victim perhaps mistook for fireflies. 



FOOD OF THE TOAD 



An examination of th._^ stomachs of 502 commo:^ toads, Bufq amerioanus, has 

 served to corroboratj in a general way the pr.;viou3 rvSo-arch of Kirkland 

 (published in Farmers' Bulletin I96). Animal r.iatt^-r constitutes 89 percent of 

 the total food for the seas' n. Vegetable matt^^r foras uorL, than 8 percent, but 

 since it consists of the needles of various coniferous trees, grasses, bits 

 of rotten wood and bark, and seeds of various plants, as well as leaves, this 



