The Vitality of Toads enclosed in Stone and Wood. 278 
some months.. The greater number of those in the larger cells of 
porous limestone were alive. No. 1, whose weight when immured 
was nine hundred twenty four grains, now weighed only six hundred 
ninety eight grains. No. 5, whose weight when immured was one 
thousand one hundred and eight five grains, now weighed one thou- 
sand two hundred and sixty five grains. The glass cover over this 
cell was slightly cracked, so that minute insects might have entered ; 
none, however, were discovered in this cell; but in another cell, 
whose glass was broken, and the animal within it dead, there was a 
large assemblage of minute insects, and a similar assemblage also on 
the outside of the glass of a third cell. In the cell No. 9, a toad 
which, when put in, weighed nine hundred eighty eight grains, had 
increased to one thousand one hundred and sixteen grains, and the 
glass over it was entire; but as the luting of the cell within which 
this toad had increased in weight was not particularly examined, it is 
probable there was some aperture in it, by which small insects found 
admission. No. 11, had decreased from nine hundred —_— six 
_— to six hundred fifty two grains. 
- When they were first examined in Dedestiead, 1826, not only were 
all the small toads dead, but the larger ones appeared much emacia- 
ted, with the two exceptions above mentioned. We have already 
stated that these probably owed their increased weight ees 
which had found access to the cells and become their food: 
_ The death of every individual of every size in the smaller dis 
of compact sandstone, appears to have resulted from a deficiency in : 
the supply of air, in consequence of the smallness of the cells, and 
the impermeable nature of the stone; the larger volume of air origi- 
nally enclosed in the cells of the limestone, and the porous nature of 
this stone itself (permeable as it is slowly by water and probably also 
by air) seems to have favored the duration of life to the wt en- 
eee in them without food. j ek 
It should be noticed that there is a defect in these vasbetiatoets, 
a from the treatment of the twenty four toads before they were 
enclosed in the blocks of stone. ‘They were shut up and buried on 
the 26th of November, but the greater number of them had been 
Caught more than two months before that time, and had been i impris- 
oned altogether in a cucumber frame placed on common 
earth, where the supply of food to so many individuals was probably 
jeavmis and their confinement unnatural, so that they were in-an un- 
y and somewhat meagre state at time of their imprisonment. 
Vou. XXII.—No 2. 
