OCTOBER 231 



within easy reach of the garden, I transport him 

 thither; yet, knowing as I do that the creature is 

 absolutely powerless to direct the contents of its poison 

 glands against me, I cannot overcome an unreasonable 

 repugnance to handling it. 



The race of toads certainly requires some special 

 provision for defence, seeing how destitute of armour 

 they are at all stages of existence. Nature gives our 

 native Bufo a good start by endowing Mother Toad 

 with prodigious fecundity, enabling her to lay from 

 2000 to 7000 eggs at a birth. Nobody knows what 

 becomes of the hordes of toadlings which, having 

 passed from the tadpole stage in about the twelfth 

 week after the eggs were laid, leave the water and 

 escape into the herbage. It takes them five years to 

 attain maturity, but only an infinitesimal fraction can 

 do so. What becomes of the rest, and what is the 

 cause of mortality? The grass snake is the only 

 vertebrate creature known to be capable of digesting 

 a toad, and grass snakes are rare in Britain. 

 So are toads, relatively to the multitudes hatched 

 annually. 



Of the afflictions to which adult toads are subject 

 a heartrending synopsis is given in the Cambridge 

 Natural History (vol. viii. p. 176). The Kussian ento- 

 mologist Portschinsky has elucidated much. Not only 

 British, but Australian and other foreign toads are 

 persecuted by certain loathsome species of flies, which 

 lay their eggs in the nostrils of their victim, whence 

 the maggots eat their way into the brain, causing 

 locomotor ataxy and ultimate death. Some of these 



