The Vitality.of Toads enclosed in Stone and Wood. 277 
In the 19th Vol. No. 1, p. 167, of Silliman’s American Journal of 
Science and Arts, David Thomas, Esq. has published some obser- 
vations on frogs and toads in stone and solid earth, enumerating sever- 
al authentic and well attested cases: these, however, amount to no 
more than a repetition 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 any thing 
to disprove the possibility of a small aperture, by which these cavities 
may have had communication with the external surface, and insects 
have been admitted. 
~The attention of the discoverer is always directed more to the 
toad than to the minutie 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 
domesticated and carefully observed during almost two years by 
- 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 1828, 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 re- 
‘turned. 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 ab- 
sorbent power of the skin of these reptiles, and show that they ta take 
in-and reject liquids, through their skin alone, by a rapid ‘oce ss of 
absorption and evaporation,—a frog absorbing sometimes in half ; an 
hour as much as half its own weight, and in a pig hours the whole of 
of its own weight of water, and nearly as rapidly giving it off when 
in any position that is warm and removed from moistnre. Dr. 
Te ‘contends that as the frog tribe never drink water, this fluid must 
be supplied by means of absorption through the skin. Both frogs 
and toads have a large bladder, which is often found full of water 5 
“whatever this fluid may be, (he says), it is as pure as distilled water 
and equally tasteless ; this I assert as well of that of the toad which 
Thave often tasted, as that of frogs.” 
