Toads enclosed in Stone and fFood. 319 



each in a small basin of plaster of Paris, four inches deep and five inches 

 in diameter having a cover of the same material carefully luted round 

 with clay J these were buried at the same time and in the same place 

 with the blocks of stone, and on being examined at the same time with 

 them in December, 1826, two of the Toads were dead, the other two 

 alive but much emaciated. We can only collect from this experiment 

 that a thin plate of plaster of Paris is permeable to air in a sufficient 

 degree to maintain the life of a Toad for thirteen months. 



In the 19th vol. No. 1, p. 167, of Silliman's American Journal of 

 Science and Arts, David Thomas, Esq. has published some observations 

 on Frogs and Toads in stone and solid earth, enumerating several authentic 

 and well attested cases ; these, however, amount to no more than a repe- 

 tition of the facts so often stated and admitted to be true, viz. that torpid 

 reptiles occur in cavities of stone, and at the depth of many feet in soil 

 and earth, but, they state not anything to disprove the possibility of a 

 small aperture by which these cavities may have had communication with 

 the external surface, and insects 1 ave been admitted. 



The attention of the discoverer is always directed more to the Toad, 

 than to the minutise of the state of the cavity in which it was contained. 



In the Literary Gazette of March 12, 1831, p. 169, there is a very 

 interesting account of the habits of a tame male Toad, that was domesti- 

 cated and carefully observed during almost two years by Mr. F. C. 

 Husenbeth. During two winters, from November to March, he ate no 

 food, though he did not become torpid, but grew thin and moved much 

 less than at other times. During the winter of 1 828 he gradually lost his 

 appetite and gradually recovered it. He was well fed during two 

 summers, and after the end of the second winter, on the 29th of March, 

 1829, he was found dead. His death was apparently caused by an 

 unusually long continuance of severe weather, which seemed to exhaust 

 him before his natural appetite returned. He could not have died from 

 starvation, for the day before his death he refused a lively fly. 



Dr. Townson also, in his Tracts on Natural History, (London, 1799,) 

 records a series of observations which he made on tame Frogs, and also 

 on some Toads; these were directed chiefly to the very absorbent power 

 of the skin of these reptiles, and show that they take in and reject liquids, 

 through their skin alone, by a rapid process of absorption and evaporation, 



