NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 69 



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- 

 oviparous ; the bead-like chains which are often seen in pools in spring, as if 

 they were looped over each other, being the newly-deposited spawn of the former. 

 The venom of toads is discarded as a fable ; but there is an excretion from the 

 skin which can be exuded upon irritation, and serves for protection. It causes 

 the excessive secretion of saliva in the mouth of a dog, and evidently gives pain. 

 Mr. Herbert says a pike will seize a toad, but immediately disgorges it, while 

 a frog is swallowed. 



"There has always been an aversion or disgust at toads. The older poets 

 clothed him in a garb ' ugly and venomous,' and one of our master-bards has 

 likened the Evil Spirit to him, as a semblance of all that is devilish or disgusting. 



' Him they found 



Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, 



Assaying with all his devilish art to reach 



The organs of her fancy. ' 



Thus we are taught, and the feeling is handed down from family to family, to 

 loathe a harmless animal. The bite is innocent of any after consequences, and 

 we never saw a toad attempt to bite. The exudation of the skin is only used in 

 self-defence. They are extremely useful in the destruction of insects, and they 

 will be found to be valuable as well as amusing assistants in a greenhouse or 

 conservatory. Sir Joseph Banks wrote : ' I have from my childhood, in con- 

 formity with the precepts of a mother void of all imaginary fear, been in the 

 constant habit of taking toads in my hand, holding them there some time, and 

 applying them to my face and nose as it may happen. My motive for doing this 

 very frequently is to inculcate the opinion I have held, since I was told by my 

 mother, that the toad is actually a harmless animal : and to whose manner of life 

 man is certainly under some obligation, as its food is chiefly those insects which 

 devour his crops and annoy him in various ways " (p. 51)- 



Professor Bell adds the following remarks"(ed. " Selborne," p. 50 note) : " The 

 whole of the typical Batrachia, the frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, &c. , undergo 

 a complete metamorphosis. In the land species (of which we have no representative 

 in this country), as from their habits they cannot have constant access to water, the 

 aquatic portion of their existence, during which the gills remain attached, cannot 

 be passed in that medium in the same manner as the frogs, &c. This essential 

 process, therefore, takes place in the oviduct, before they are excluded from the 

 mother and come forth in the perfect condition. But in the other forms, to which 

 our native species all belong, the change takes place in the water, and the young 

 live there for a time in a fish-like state as regards not only their respiration but 

 most of the other functions of life. The common water-newt, or eft, exhibits a 

 beautiful example of this interesting change, retaining its pretty reddish leaf-like 

 gills till the animals are an inch or more in length." [R. B. S.] 



