GREEN LIZARD. 71 



been procured for you in Devonshire ; because it corroborates 

 my discovery, which I made many years ago, of the same sort, 

 on a sunny sandbank near Farnham, in Surrey. I am well 

 acquainted with the south hams of Devonshire ; and can sup- 

 pose that district, from its southerly situation, to be a proper 

 habitation for such animals in their best colours 



Since the ring-ousels of your vast mountains do certainly not 

 forsake them against winter, our suspicions that those which 

 visit this neighbourhood about Michaelmas are not English 

 birds, but driven from the more northern parts of Europe by the 

 frosts, are still more reasonable ; and it will be worth your pains 



bility of enduring for apparently almost indefinite periods enclosed within a massof stoneor of grow- 

 ing timber, various instances of which many resting on most respectable authority must have 

 occurred within the reading of almost every person. Of course numerous experiments have been 

 instituted in order to throw light upon so strange a phenomenon, from which, however, little 

 can be satisfactorily deduced, save that at least in ordinary cases the ingress of some air is 

 necessary, or the creature very shortly ceases to exist. Mr. Jesse informs us that he knew a 

 gentleman who put a toad into a small flower-pot, and secured it so that no insect could pene- 

 trate it (which latter is, however, in all probability a mistake), and then buried it so deep in his 

 garden that it was secured from the influence of frost. At the end of twenty years he took it up, 

 and found the toad increased in bulk, and healthy. It has generally happened that, on the 

 creature being restored to air and light, after having been so long immured, its death has fol- 

 lowed almost immediately, probably in consequence of its too sudden liberation, an opinion which 

 is strengthened by the following very credible narration, the accuracy of which I see no reason 

 to question, and which was furnished me incidentally by an intelligent quarryman, of whom I 

 was seeking some information with regard to fossils. A toad, that had been extricated unhurt 

 from the interior of a block of limestone, was, he informed me, kept by his fellow workmen as a 

 curiosity, and placed under a tumbler glass, where it lived about three weeks, at the expiration 

 of which time it managed to effect its escape, thus showing that, when not too suddenly exposed 

 to the free air, the animal will survive its release. I am inclined to imagine, also, that the well- 

 known experiments of Dr. Buckland on this subject would have been more satisfactory, had the 

 creatures been gradually inured to close imprisonment. In ordinary cases it is probably a long 

 time before the entrance of the cavity into which a toad had crept becomes completely closed, 

 under which circumstances it may be, as indeed Dr. Buckland suggests, that, "deprived of food 

 and air, it might fall into that state of torpor or suspended animation to which certain animals 

 are subject in winter, but bow long it might continue in that state is uncertain." I do not re- 

 member to have heard of any but living toads being found immured. This animal can, indeed, 

 insinuate itself into so small an orifice as to astonish any person who has not witnessed it ; and 

 in retreats into which it can but just squeeze itself it very commonly retires to pass the winter. 

 Thus it is that it not unfrequently contrives to locate itself in cavities whence it finds itself un- 

 able to emerge, stalactitic incrustations or fortuitous accumulations opposing its re-passage from 

 the interior of a rock, while the latter, or the growth of wood around the entrance, encloses it 

 within the hollow of a tree. In either situation it would subsist for a time on the insects which 

 continually crawl into such places, while its constitution would perhaps be gradually preparing 

 to fall into that lethargic state above adverted to. 



It must not be concealed, however, that this is merely a hypothetical supposition, though it 

 would seem to be the most rational mode of accounting for the phenomenon. 1 am not aware 

 that the animal has ever been found in other than a wakeful state. 



The same sluggish tenaciousuess of life appears to be evinced also by certain other species of 

 amphibia, though probably not quite to the same extent. Capt. Brown relates of the triton palus- 

 tr'u, an animal which in its general aspect seems to hold much the same relation to the smooth- 

 skinned newts which the toads do to the frogs, and which, perhaps, ought to constitute a dis- 

 tinct minimum division, that he " once found a very large specimen of it in an old wooden 

 conduit at Fountain-bridge, Edinburgh, which had been stopped at both ends for upwards of 

 twenty years. The animal must have been at least that age, as it was not possible that it could 

 obtain access from the time the conduit was stopped." ED. 



