52 NATURAL HISTORY 



I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, that 

 some ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a 

 fancy to a toad, which they nourished summer after summer, 

 for many years, till he grew to a monstrous size, with the 

 maggots which turn to flesh flies. The reptile used to come 

 forth every evening from an hole under the garden-steps ; and 

 was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at 

 last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave 

 him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one 

 eye. After this accident the creature languished for some 

 time and died. 



I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive reading 

 of the excellent account there is from Mr. Derham, in Ray's 

 Wisdom of God in the Creation (p. 365), concerning the 

 migration of frogs from their breeding ponds. In this ac- 

 count he at once subverts that foolish opinion of their drop- 

 ping from the clouds in rain ; shewing that it is from the 

 grateful coolness and moisture of those showers that they are 

 tempted to set out on their travels, which they defer till those 

 fall. Frogs are as yet in their tadpole state ; but in a few 

 weeks, our lanes, paths, fields, will swarm for a few days with 

 myriads of these emigrants, no larger than my little finger 

 nail. Swammerdam .gives a most accurate account of the 



some resemblance between the toad and the viper, and the frog and the 

 snake: the frog and the snake have a power of escaping from their ene- 

 mies by their agility, and therefore are harmless j but the toad and viper 

 being sluggish, and having no powers of escaping, are armed with poison. 

 As I passed the gardener the other day, he turned up a toad in digging, 

 which I desired him not to destroy, as it was an inoffensive animal, and 

 helped to clear the ground of grubs and insects ; upon which, to convince 

 me that it was not altogether harmless, he took the toad up by the skin 

 of its back, and placing it on a gravel walk, set a little terrier bitch at it, 

 who, from former experiments, was aware of its venomous quality, and 

 tho' naturally very fierce and eager, she touched it very gently with her 

 nose, nothing equal to the gardener's grasp when he took it up, and in- 

 stantly the foam came from her mouth, and her face and eyes were 

 strongly convulsed. This continued upon her half an hour, during which 

 time she would not eat any thing that was offered her. How the venom 

 was communicated I am not able to say. Those who make this part of 

 physiology their study would do well to try the experiment." T. B.] 



