Toads enclosed in Stone and PFood. 317 



by a luting of clay, shews how very small an aperture will admit mi- 

 nute insects sufficient to maintain life. In the cell No, 5, where the glass 

 was slightly cracked, the communication though small was obvious, but, 

 in the cell No. 9, where the glass cover remained entire, and where it 

 appears certain from the increased weight of the enclosed animal, that 

 insects must have found admission, we liave an example of these minute 

 animals finding their way into a cell, to which great care had been taken 

 to prevent any possibility of access. 



Admitting then that Toads are occasionally found in cavities of wood 

 and stone with which there is no conmiunication sufficiently large to allow 

 the ingress and egress of the animal enclosed in them, we may, I think, 

 find a solution of such phenomena in the habits of these reptiles, and of 

 the insects which form their food. The first effort of the young Toad, as 

 soon as it has left its tad-pole state and emerged from the water, is to seek 

 shelter in holes and crevices of rocks and trees. An individual, which, 

 when young, may have thus entered a cavity by some very narrow 

 aperture would find abundance of food by catching insects, which like 

 itself seek shelter within such cavities, and may soon have increased so 

 much in bulk as to render it impossible to go out again through the 

 narrow aperture at which it entered. A small hole of this kind is very 

 likely to be overlooked by common workmen who are the only people 

 whose operations on stone and wood disclose cavities in the interior of 

 such substances. In the case of Toads, Snakes and Lizards, that 

 occasionally issue from stones that are broken in a quarry, or in 

 sinking wells, and sometimes even from strata of coal at the bottom 

 of a coal mine, the evidence is never perfect to shew that the reptiles 

 were entirely enclosed in a solid rock; no examination is ever made 

 until the reptile is first discovered by the breaking of the mass in 

 which it was contained, and then it is too late to ascertain without carefully 

 replacing every fragment (and in no case that T have seen reported 

 has this ever been done) whether or not there was any hole or crevice by 

 which the animal may have entered the cavity from which it was extracted. 

 Without previous examination it is almost impossible to prove that there 

 was no such communication. In the case of rocks near the surface of 

 the earth, and in stone quarries, reptiles find ready admission to holes and 

 fissures. We have a notorious example of this kind in the Lizard found 



