TOADS FOUND LIVING IN STONE 381 



call " the evidence of their own senses " and the dis- 

 entombment of living specimens of the ancient world 

 from lumps of stone or of coal — apart from that given 

 by the fact that there is complete absence of any proof 

 that the toad before liberation was really and truly 

 encased in a stony chamber to which it could not, by 

 any possibility, have recently gained access — is that the 

 common toad, which is thus discovered and supposed to 

 be a survivor of long past geologic ages, is a modern 

 production of Nature's great breeding establishment. 

 It is quite easy to distinguish it from all other living 

 species of toads ; it is spread over a limited area, 

 existing in the north temperate region of our hemisphere 

 in many parts of which it is replaced by other similar 

 but distinct species. If we ask what is known of it in 

 past ages as revealed by the Pliocene, Miocene, and 

 Eocene strata, we find that it did not exist at all in 

 the latest of these, but was represented by ancestors 

 like it, yet markedly different. Remains of a kind of 

 toad are found in the Upper Eocene " phosphorite " of 

 the South of France, and in 1903 such remains were 

 found in an oolitic deposit. As we descend further the 

 series of geologic strata, the remains of toads and frogs 

 cease to occur. In the coal measures they were repre- 

 sented by ancestors provided with tails like the newts 

 and salamanders of our own day. They had not come 

 into existence, nor, probably, had any creature closely 

 resembling them, at that period. In the " Coal 

 Measures " we find abundant remains of very large and 

 also of small animals related to salamanders, newts, 

 and less closely to toads, but they are in great and 

 important features of structure unlike the Amphibia and 

 Batrachia of to-day. Hence the notion which lay at 

 the bottom of the excitement caused by the discovery 

 of live toads in the interior oi rocks or of coal — namely. 



I 



