38o DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



It is not worth while inquiring who was the first to 

 make the suggestion, but it very soon became one of 

 the favourite assertions of the wonder-mongers who hang 

 on to the skirts of science — not to be confused with the 

 enthusiastic nature-lover — that the living toads found in 

 blocks of stone, and sometimes in lumps of coal, are 

 thousands of years old, contemporary with the geologic 

 age of the rocks in which they are found embedded, 

 survivors of the extinct animals whose bones and teeth 

 the geologists had discovered and described, also em- 

 bedded in such rocks ! This entirely baseless fancy 

 took root, and has flourished ever since the early 

 Victorian period. Only a few months ago there were 

 paragraphs in the papers on the discovery of a live toad 

 of antediluvian age in a block of stone. Old gentlemen 

 have repeatedly written to the newspapers, and some- 

 times privately to me, describing how they had, on 

 breaking an unusually large lump of coal in the dining- 

 room coal-scuttle, liberated from an age-long prison an ante- 

 diluvian toad, which. hopped out from the lump of coal 

 in a marv^ellous state of health and agility. Whenever 

 any discussion has arisen with regard to these state- 

 ments, and such an explanation offered as I have given 

 above as to the apparent enclosure of a toad in a piece of 

 rock, or a similar explanation as to the encasement of 

 one in the black mud adhering to lumps of coal stacked 

 in sheds or cellars — some of the would-be believers in 

 the immense age of the liberated toads appeal to the 

 fact that amongst the most remarkable extinct animals 

 whose bodies are found in ancient strata are reptiles, whilst 

 others, more learned, insist on the well-known prevalence 

 of the remains of animals of the class Amphibia, to 

 which the toad belongs, in the " Coal Measures." 



The answer to these rash believers in what they 



hf 



