An Introduction to a Biology 



remember a drawing in one of the German humorous papers 

 of a young nincompoop lolling back in an arm-chair and re- 

 marking to his elderly host : " Es ist merkwiirdig, Jeheim- 

 rath, wie viele dumme Leute es in der Welt giebt"; and 

 receiving the answer, " Tja, aber es ist immer einer mehr als 

 man denkt." 



So, in case the reader should think that I imagine that 

 I am not as liable to this disease as I think others are, I will 

 now record in considerable detail a case which revealed to 

 me the appalling susceptibility of my own mind to this 

 fearful complaint. 



In the spring of this year I had occasion to go to Ischia, 

 an island near Naples, for the purpose of convalescence. 

 While I was there I collected, in the deep mountain gullies 

 worn out by the hot streams in the volcanic tufa of which 

 the island is made, six toads of the species Bufo viridis. The 

 first stage of my journey back to England was to Naples, 

 whither I went with the toads. Whilst I was there I gave 

 some of them to a friend of mine who was working in the 

 laboratory there ; but when, after I had seen the last of 

 him, I tried to remember how many toads I had given him, 

 I could not do so, though I was sure it was either one or two. 



From Naples I started on a North German Lloyd ship 

 for England. The toads were in two tin boxes, which in their 

 turn were in a wicker trunk I had bought in Naples. On 

 the second day out I thought it was time to feed the toads, 

 so I provided them with pieces of ox tongue cut up small. 

 At Gibraltar I was joined in my cabin by an elderly Scottish 

 doctor, who was travelling for rest after a nervous break- 

 down ; I occupied the upper berth, he the lower. The noises 

 heard during the night on a ship bounding in the Bay of 

 Biscay are many and varied. But notwithstanding the num- 

 ber and variety of the sounds, I was almost sure I could 

 detect the croak of the toads, which is rather shrill. I was 

 naturally a little uneasy lest my cabin companion should 

 hear the noise and inquire about its origin, but I comforted 



