Rana and Bufo. 



181 



COMMON AMERICAN TOAD. 

 How He Manages a Difficulty. 



Toads can be tamed and taught to eat from the hand. 

 They are easily beguiled with sugar and with bread that 

 has been soaked in milk, but, like a captious child, they eat 

 only the middle out of the slice, and leave the crust. We once 

 saw a toad, a noble fellow he was, who, at a certain hour of 

 the closing day, would come from his gloomy retreat to 

 receive at the hands of man his supper of flies, which he 

 had been trained to catch on the throw. So unerringly 

 would his tongue dart out at the opportune moment, that he 

 seldom, if ever, shot wide of his mark. It is amusing to 

 observe him when, in his greed and haste, he has attempted 

 to swallow a huge grasshopper whose legs will not accom- 

 modate themselves to his peculiar gape of mouth. How he 

 swallows and twists and contracts the walls of his throat, 

 but the legs seem unmanageable. He does not give up, or 

 endeavor to eject the half-swallowed body, but ponders the 

 matter over and over. A look of delight beams out of his 

 eyes, that shows he has managed the problem. Up goes to 

 the mouth the right fore-leg, and, in less time than it takes 



