128 



LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



burning coals for fire-flies ; thus dying, involun- 

 tarily, the death of Cato's daughter. 



" They that write of toads," quoth Master 

 Philemon Holland, in his translation of Pliny, 

 " strive a-vie, who shall write most wonders of 

 them ; for some say, that if one of them be brought 

 into a place of concourse, where people are in 

 great number assembled, they shall be all hush, 

 and not a word among them." 



If this were but true, what a blessing an im- 

 portation of them would be into a certain great 

 house, where words now are much more plentiful 

 tban acts. 



No kitchen where the cooks are too apt to boil 

 at a gallop, instead of regulating the pot at that 

 gentle rate which alone can insure the tenderness 

 of the joint, should be without the following bit 

 of the toad's skeleton : 



" They affirm, also, that there is one little bone 

 in their right side, which, if it be thrown into a 

 pan of seething water, the vessel will cool pres- 

 ently, and boil no more until it be taken forth 

 again. Now, this bone (say they) is found by 

 this means : If a man take one of these venomous 

 frogs or toads, and cast it into a nest of ants, for 

 to be eaten and devoured by them, and look when 

 they have gnawed away the flesh to the very 

 bones, each bone, one after another, is to be put 

 into a kettle seething upon the fire, and so it will 

 soon be known which is the bone, by the effect 

 aforesaid. There is another such like bone (by 

 their saying) in the left side; cast it into the 

 water that hath done seething, it will come to 

 boil and wallow again. This bone (forsooth) is 

 called Apocyuon ; and why so? Because y-wis, 

 there is not a. thing more powerful to appease and 

 repress the violence and furie of curst dogs than 

 it." 



While some have proclaimed the toad as the 

 most poisonous of animals, others have denied it 

 any ->oxious qualities whatever. 



According to ./Elian, death not only lurked in 

 its breath, but its very aspect killed, so that the 

 basilisk had in it a potent rival. " The precious 

 jewel in its head " was considered to be the 

 redeeming quality in the " ugly and venomous " 

 creature. This jewel was not its brilliant and 

 beautiful eye, which the earthy croaker was 

 said to have exchanged with the heavenly lark,* 

 but a stone well known to the collectors of the 

 last century as the bufonite, toad-stone, crapau- 

 dine, and krottenstein, supposed to be largely 

 endowed with medical and magical powers, and 

 familiar to the philosophers of the present, as one 

 of the fossil palatal teeth of a fish (pycnodus). 



The whole animal was a repertorium for poi- 

 soners before the modern Canidias had hit upon 



* The lore-sick Juliet exclaims : 



" It is the larke that sings so out of tune, 

 Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps. 

 Some say the larke makes sweet division ; 

 This doth not so : for she divideth us. 

 Some say the larke and loathed toad change eyes, 

 now I would they had changed voices too." 



the powder of succession. The Roman ladies 

 who did not love their lords, hastened their de- 

 parture for the city of the dead by a bufonite 

 potion,* or an infusion of rubetan juice in a cup 

 of rich Celanian ;f and, as poisoning and witch- 

 craft generally went hand in hand,J there is no 

 cause for surprise that toads were choice contri- 

 butions for the charmed pot of secret, black, and 

 midnight hags. " Paddockefy calls " the witches 

 in Macbeth ; and the reptile was the first ingre- 

 dient in the caldron that raised the blood-boller'd 

 Banquo, and seared the eye-balls of the murderous 

 thane with the regal " show" of the disquieted 

 spirit's line. 



The eleventh hag in Jonson's Masque of 

 Queens, exultingly sings 



I went to the toad, breeds under the wall ; 

 I charmed him out, and he came at my call. 



And Gesner ascribes a power to it which was 

 believed to conduce to the quiet of mankind at the 

 expense of their vigor. 



But those who assert the bad eminence of the 

 toad for " swelterd venom," and those who deny 

 it all noxious qualities Pennant was inclined to 

 the latter opinion, and Cuvier believed it to be 

 innocuous are both wrong. The exudation from 

 the pimples, or follicles, on the true skin of the 

 toad, especially about the head and shoulders, was 

 proved by Dr. Davy to be a very acrid secretion, 

 resembling the extract of aconite when applied to 

 the tongue, and even acting upon the hands. 

 Pressure causes this fluid to be emitted, occasion- 

 ally to some distance, and the defence stands the 

 toad often in good stead, especially when attacked 

 by dogs, which have been frequently seen to drop 

 the troublesome customer from their mouths, 

 with a shake of the head even more eloquent than 

 Lord Burleigh's. And yet this secretion, more 

 acrid than the poison of serpents, produces no 

 effect when introduced into the circulation. A 

 chicken was inoculated with it, and no alteration 

 was perceptible in its actions or health. 



Those who are interested in the marvellous 

 stories of " antediluvian toads " will be well 

 rewarded by consulting Dr. Buckland's paper on 

 the subject in the fifth volume of the Zoological 

 Journal. He made several experiments by shut- 

 ting them up in cells, fashioned in a large block 

 of oolitic limestone, and in another of compact 

 siliceous sandstone, and buried the blocks with 

 the imprisoned toads three feet deep in his garden. 

 He placed others each in a small basin of plaster 

 of Paris, four inches deep and five inches in 

 diameter, and well luted them over with a cover- 

 ing of the same material. These were buried 

 with those immured in the blocks of stone. He 

 inclosed some in three holes cut for the purpose 

 in the trunk of an apple-tree. Two were placed 



* JUVENAL, Sat. vi. 558. f Ibid., Sat. i. 69. 



\ An malas 



Canidia tractavit dapes 1 HOB. Ep. iii. 8. 

 Padda and Tassa are the names assigned to the toad 

 in the Fauna Suecica. 



