v BELIEF AND EVIDENCE 113 



cloud ; nevertheless, it can be stated with confidence 

 that no so-called thunderbolt has ever proved to be 

 one, so that the possessor of a true specimen would 

 have an object of unique value and interest. In the 

 absence of such a specimen, it is permissible to state that 

 no thunderstorm has ever discharged a thunderbolt 

 which was afterwards picked up and is preserved in a 

 museum, or among a private collection of curiosities. 



Uncritical observation and hasty conclusion are respon- 

 sible for the reports of the occurrence of living frogs 

 and toads enclosed in blocks of coal or other hard rock 

 many feet below the surface of the ground. A stone is 

 being broken by a quarryman, a frog is seen hopping 

 about close to the place, and forthwith the lively imagina- 

 tion of the labourer persuades him that he has seen it 

 actually come out of a cavity in the rock. Dean Buck- 

 land made experiments for the purpose of ascertaining 

 how long frogs and toads could live shut up in cavities 

 of stone and excluded from air and food, with the result 

 that most of them were dead within a year, and none 

 survived more than two years. Yet frogs are alleged 

 to have been found enclosed in rocks which, geology 

 teaches, were deposited under water millions of years 

 ago, and afterwards subjected to a pressure which has 

 crushed all the fossils contained in them as flat as paper. 

 If geology is right, the frog stories are utterly incredible. 

 Or, as a distinguished geologist once said, the blow of 

 the hammer that disclosed a live frog inside a block 

 of stone without an opening would at the same time 

 destroy not only geology but the whole fabric of natural 

 science. 



Critical examination of evidence, and cautious con- 

 sideration of conclusions, are characteristic attributes of 

 a scientific mind. There is a tendency in the present 



G.D. H 



