SOME FACTS AND FICTIONS OF ZOOLOGY. 91 



of entrance would become an impossibility. Next, let us 

 suppose that the toleration of the toad's system to starvation 

 and to a limited supply of air is taken into account, together 

 with the fact that these creatures will hibernate during each 

 winter, and thus economise, as it were, their vital activity 

 and strength ; and after the animal has thus existed for a 

 year or two no doubt under singularly hard conditions 

 let us imagine that the rock is split up by the wedge and 

 lever of the excavator. We can then readily enough account 

 for the apparently inexplicable story of "the toad in the 

 rock." " There is the toad and here is the solid rock," say 

 the gossips. "There is an animal which has singular 

 powers of sustaining life under untoward conditions, and 

 which, in its young state, could have gained admittance to 

 the rock through a mere crevice," says the naturalist in 

 reply. Doubtless, the great army of the unconvinced may 

 still believe in the tale as told them ; for the weighing of 

 evidence and the placing pros and cons in fair contrast are 

 not tasks of congenial or wonted kind in the ordinary run 

 of life. Some people there will be who will believe in the 

 original solid rock and its toad, despite the assertion of the 

 geologist that the earliest fossils of toads appear in almost 

 the last-formed rocks, and that a live toad in rocks of very 

 ancient age presuming, according to the popular belief, 

 that the animal was enclosed when the rock was formed 

 would be as great an anomaly and wonder as the mention, 

 as an historical fact, of an express train or the telegraph in 

 the days of the patriarchs. In other words, the live toad 

 which hops out of an Old Red Sandstone rock must be pre- 

 sumed, on the popular belief, to be older by untold ages, than 

 the oldest fossil frogs and toads. The reasonable mind, how- 

 ever, will ponder and consider each feature of the case, and 

 will rather prefer to countenance a supposition based on 

 ordinary experience, than an explanation brought ready-made 

 from the domain of the miraculous ; whilst not the least 

 noteworthy feature of these cases is that included in the 

 remark of Smellie respecting the tendency of uneducated 



