APPENDIX: NO. XIII. 13 
its fore-paws over its head like a school-boy who is getting threshed. 
There was also another species of Toad", chiefly differing at first sight 
from our Common Toad in the colour of the eyes, which were greyish, 
instead of bright gold-colour. I did uct recognize there our 
Common Toad. I was préviously ignorant of the fact, and it struck 
me as very remarkable, that there should be two species of Toads, 
that we have not in England, at so little distance from us. A day or 
two after the above-mentioned excursion, in examining the crater of 
the extinct volcano, Roderberg, as I was minutely inspecting a little 
cavity naturally formed in a bed of cinders, I raked out a Toad * 
apparently of the same species as the last spoken of above; to my 
great surprise, and with very great interest, I observed a string of 
eggs tied round the hocks or knees of its hind legs. They were 
tough and semi-transparent, and I think I may describe their 
appearance by saying that the Toad’s hind legs looked as if they 
were chained together by a necklace formed of large mustard-seeds 
strung on fishing-gut. The time of year too! Was it a male or 
female? What will it do with its eggs? How different they are 
from the spawn of the Common Toad, and yet how very much alike 
the animals are, with such different habits! I kept it in a tin box 
for some days with my other Toads and, unfortunately, its eggs got 
separated from it, though the string appeared to be tightly twisted 
round each knee, or heel, if we choose so to call it, there being no 
communication with the body. At Coblentz, I put them in spirits 
of wine, thinking they would die instantly, but they were several 
minutes first, and one poor fellow made me deeply regret that I had 
inflicted such pain upon him, as he showed by opening his mouth 
wide, and trying to wipe it out with his fore feet. I carried this 
and several other bottles of reptiles about with me for several weeks, 
but as they leaked rather, I got tired of them, and gave them to a 
museum-keeper at Berne, where also I saw other specimens of the 
same two species of Toad, bottled and named, but I did not take note 
of the names. Whilst on the subject of Toads and Frogs, I may be 
allowed to make the observation that like the other genera of 
reptiles, they seem to rejoice in heat, though it must be combined 
with moisture; on the hottest days in North Africa, I have seen 
hundreds of Frogs, and of several species, basking on the banks of 
pools ; on any alarm they jump into the water, sometimes with a 
very great leap. Mr. Darwin found no Frogs in the damp woods of 
Tierra del Fuego. In England we have several fewer reptiles than 
our neighbours in the Kast, though we have two or three more than our 
neighbours in the West; are the sea breezes of the Atlantic unfayour- 
able to reptile life? Yet Natter-jacks live like gentlemen in houses of 
their own in the sand dunes near Calais. I will mention one more 
remarkable reptile I observed near the Rhine. It was on the banks 
of the crater-lake, the Laacher-See. I was feeling somewhat nervous 
and conscious-striken, having just subjected a puppy to a “ Grotto 
(Bufo viridis—Ep. | > [ Alytes obstetricus.— Ep. | 
