COMMON TOAD. 



Ill 



arranged in a double series, placed alternately, and perfectly 

 regular. The jelly-like mass in which the embryos are en- 

 veloped, forms a continuous line about the eighth or sixth of 

 an inch in thickness, and extending to the length of three or 

 four feet. The ova are deposited in the spring, about a 

 fortnight later than those of the Frog, and it is not until the 

 approach of autumn that the young ones, having cast off 

 their Tadpole form, come to seek their food on the land. 

 The Tadpole is smaller and blacker in all the stages of its 

 growth than that of the Frog ; but there are no other pecu- 

 liarities which are at all popularly interesting. 



The stories of Toads having been found in the very sub- 

 stance of the wood of a tree, and in the midst of a solid and 

 hard rock, are too numerous, and too generally asserted and 

 believed, to be passed over here, although I have to regret 

 that, after many and urgent inquiries, and the examination 

 of several asserted cases of that kind, I am unable to throw 

 any light upon this doubtful and mysterious question. Some 

 years since I had a Toad sent me by a person of the highest 

 credit, with the assurance that it had been taken alive out of 

 a mass of indurated clay, of great depth, and that it had died 

 immediately after being exposed to the air. But this case, 

 like most, if not all, others of the same kind, is liable to the 

 objection that the Toad most probably fell into the hollow 

 where the men were at work, and was taken up by them in 

 ignorance of the mode in which it had come there. Nu- 

 merous experiments have been made in order to try whether 

 the Toads would die on being artificially embedded in masses 

 of clay, of plaster of Paris, in wooden boxes surrounded by 

 plaster, and in other similar circumstances ; but hitherto all 

 have failed, although in some of them the animals have cer- 

 tainly lived for a much longer period than could have been 

 expected, prolonged sometimes to many months, or even to 

 between one and two years. Upon the whole, it appears to 



