320 THE TOAD. 



rock, or cased within the body of an oak tree, without the 

 smallest access on any side either for nourishment or air, 

 and yet taken out alive and perfect ! Stories of this kind 

 it would be as rash to contradict, as difficult to believe ; 

 we have the highest authorities bearing witness to their 

 truth, and yet the whole analogy of nature seems to arraign 

 them of falsehood. Bacon asserts, that Toads are found 

 in this manner ; Dr. Plot asserts the same : there is to 

 this day a marble chimney-piece at Chats worth with the 

 print of a Toad upon it, and a tradition of the manner in 

 which it was found. In the Memoirs of the Academy of 

 Sciences, there is an account of a Toad found alive and 

 healthy in the heart of a very thick elm, without the 

 smallest entrance or egress. In the year 1731, there was 

 another found near Nantes in the heart of an old oak, 

 without the smallest issue to its cell ; and the discoverer 

 was of opinion, from the size of the tree, that the animal 

 could not have been confined there less than eighty or a 

 hundred years, without sustenance and without air. To 

 all these we can only oppose the strangeness of the facts ; 

 the necessity this animal appears under of receiving air; 

 and its dying like all other animals in the air-pump, when 

 deprived of this all-sustaining fluid. But whether these be 

 objections to weigh against such respectable arid disin- 

 terested authority, I will not pretend to determine ; certain 

 it is, that if kept in a damp place, the Toad will live for 

 several months without any food whatsoever. 



