128 THE COMMON TOAD 



game, and attractive both in summer, when set with 

 dense, upright spikes of flower, and in autumn, when 

 the leaves turn yellow. 



The name Spircca used to puzzle me, for it seemed to 

 indicate a spiral habit of growth, whereas none of the 

 family known to me shows any tendency to climb. The 

 late Lord Avebury, while he still bore his more familiar 

 name of Sir John Lubbock, explained the reason of the 

 title by showing me that the carpels are twisted into a 

 spiral. Howbeit, the suggestion put forward in his 

 work on British Flowering Plants that the intention 

 might be ' to mimic small caterpillars, and thus inveigle 

 birds to carry them [the seeds] about,' leaves me quite 

 cold. British birds are far too good fi old -naturalists to 

 be cheated by such a shallow device. 



XXXII 



In turning over the pages of tbe Gentleman's Maga- 

 zine for December 1783 my attention was 

 common drawn to a discussion on the alleged venomous 

 properties of the common toad (Bufo vul- 

 yaris), a creature which I hold in high esteem by 

 reason of its beneficent function as garden police, 

 preying voraciously on snails, woodlice. earwigs, and 

 other noxious creeping things. It must be owned that 

 a toad's appearance is the reverse of prepossessing, 

 which no doubt accounts for the fact that, ever since 

 men and toads first became personally acquainted with 

 each other, many and grievous offences have been 

 imputed to the amphibian. The belief is still pretty 



