PEPACTON 



circumstances and at that time of the year, suggests 

 the inquiry whether they do not breed away from 

 the water, as others of our toads are known at times 

 to do, and thus skip the tadpole state. I have several 

 times seen the ground, after a June shower, swarm- 

 ing with minute toads, out to wet their jackets. 

 Some of them were no larger than crickets. They 

 were a long distance from the water, and had evi- 

 dently been hatched on the land, and had never 

 been polhwogs. Whether the tree-toad breeds in 

 trees or on the land, yet remains to be determined. 1 

 Another fact in the natural history of this crea- 

 ture, not set down in the books, is that they pass 

 the winter in a torpid state in the ground, or in 

 stumps and hollow trees, instead of in the mud of 

 ponds and marshes, like true frogs, as we have been 

 taught. The pair in the old apple-tree above re- 

 ferred to, I heard on a warm, moist day late in 

 November, and again early in April. On the latter 

 occasion, I reached my hand down into the cavity 

 of the tree and took out one of the toads. It was 

 the first I had heard, and I am convinced it had 

 passed the winter in the moist, mud-like mass of 



1 It now (1895) seems well established that both common toads 

 and tree-toads pass the first period of their lives in water as tad- 

 poles, and that both undergo their metamorphosis when very 

 small. As soon as the change is effected, the little toads leave 

 the water and scatter themselves over the country with remark- 

 able rapidity, traveling chiefly by night, but showing themselves 

 in the daytime after showers. 



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