40 THE NATUEAL HISTORY 



persons were), when a quack, at this village, ate a toad to make 

 the country-people stare ; afterwards he drank oil. 1 



I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, that 

 some ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy to 

 a toad, which they nourished summer after summer, for many 

 years, till he grew to a monstrous size, with the maggots which 

 turn to flesh flies. The reptile used to come forth every evening 

 from an hole under the garden-steps ; and was taken up, after 

 supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning 

 him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with 

 his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the 

 creature languished for some time and died. 



I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive reading of 

 the excellent account there is from Mr. Derham, in Hay s Wisdom 

 of God in the Creation (p. 365), concerning the migration of frogs 

 from their breeding ponds. In this account he at once subverts 

 that foolish opinion of their dropping from the clouds in rain ; 

 shewing that it is from the grateful coolness and moisture of 

 those showers that they are tempted to set out on their travels, 

 which they defer till those fall. Frogs are as yet in their tadpole 

 state ; but, in a few weeks, our lanes, paths, fields, will swarm for 

 a few days with myriads of those emigrants, no larger than my 

 little finger nail. Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of 

 the method and situation in which the male impregnates the 



1 [Bell gives the following account of the toad from a paper found among 

 White's MSS. It is in a boy's handwriting, and was probably written to dictation. 

 The gardener was doubtless White's old gardener, Thomas Hoar. 



" The benevolence of modern naturalists hath induced them to pronounce the 

 toad harmless, in contradiction to the extravagant tales of the ancients concerning 

 its poisonous qualities, which exposed it to many cruelties. But by what I saw the 

 other day, I am convinced it hath some venomous properties, which it exerts in its 

 defence. There seems to be some resemblance between the toad and the viper, 

 and the frog and the snake : the frog and the snake have a power of escaping from 

 their enemies by their agility, and therefore are harmless ; but the toad and viper 

 being sluggish, and having no powers of escaping, are armed with poison. As I 

 passed the gardener the other day, he turned up a toad in digging, which I desired 

 him not to destroy, as it was an inoffensive animal, and helped to clear the ground 

 of grubs and insects ; upon which, to convince me that it was not altogether harm- 

 less, he took the toad up by the skin of its back, and placing it on a gravel walk, 

 set a little terrier bitch at it, who, from former experiments, was aware of its 

 venomous quality, and tho' naturally very fierce and eager, she touched it very 

 gently with her nose, nothing equal to the gardener's grasp when he took it up, 

 and instantly the foam came from her mouth, and her face and eyes were strongly 

 convulsed. This continued upon her half an hour, during which time she would 

 not eat any thing that was offered her. How the venom was communicated I am 

 not able to say. Those who make this part of physiology their study would do 

 well to try the experiment."] 



