288 



NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



If roughly handled, a whitish liquid, which is somewhat poisonous, 

 is secreted from the skin of a toad, especially from the large glands 

 near the head. It will cause some swelling of a dog's mouth, and 



care should be 

 taken not to allow 

 it to get into the 

 eyes when hand- 

 ling toads. The 

 natural precau- 

 tions, gentle hand- 

 ling and washing 

 the hands after- 

 wards, are all-suffi- 

 c i e n t safeguards 

 against any ven- 

 omous properties, 

 and these also 

 apply to the hand- 

 ling of many other 

 animals 1 ; but 

 everything advo- 

 cated in this chap- 

 ter can be done 

 without so much 

 as touching a toad. 



FIG. 117. PROTECTIVE COLORATION We ma Y catch U 



in a large leaf, a 



piece of paper or cloth or in a tumbler or jelly glass. The neatest 

 way to demonstrate a toad to a class is to have it in a clean tumbler 

 with a piece of gauze securely tied over the top. It may then be 



1 A..H. Kirkland, " The Habits, Food, and Economic Value of the Ameri- 

 can Toad " {Bulletin 46, Hatch Experiment Station, Amherst, Mass.), gives 

 the fullest account'extant of the toad from this standpoint. By his method, 

 killing the animals and opening the stomach, he identified eighty-three dif- 

 ferent species of insects, most of them injurious, as entering into its dietary. 

 By the method advocated above, however, *'.<?., by making feeding tests in 

 a vivarium with insects collected for the purpose, any school could add 



