1830 The Zoologist — September, 1869. 



the mode in which the toad attained his station at the entrance of 

 the hive, or what antidote he possessed to the poison so likely to be 

 conveyed by the stings of the bees ; all I can do is to vouch for the 

 veracity of my informant, which I do without the slightest hesitation ; 

 and it is not a little singular that this taste for bees on the part of 

 toads should have been noticed two hundred years ago in a quaint 

 work intituled ' Profit and Pleasure united, or the Husbandman's 

 Magazine.' In this strange but most interesting publication, all the 

 enemies of the hive bee are enumerated, and the toad is placed at the 

 head of the list. 



A question has been raised as to the possibility of the toads attain- 

 ing so elevated a position at the alighting board of a bee-hive, but 

 those who have studied the habits of the toad well know that this is 

 very practicable. Mr. Weir has stated in the 'Zoologist' that he once 

 observed a toad perched sedately on the top of an open parlour door, 

 and he seemed to be viewing the human transactions going on beneath 

 him with as much interest as Cowper's jjhilosophic Jackdavv; and I 

 have often observed in greenhouses a toad squatting on the highest 

 possible point, looking to admiration the boast of Alexander Sel- 

 kirk : — 



" I am inonaicli of all I survey." 



Insects arc, however, an)])ly avenged on the toad for the incessant 

 warlare he wages against them ; and they inflict on him the most 

 horrible of all deaths, that of being eaten by worms like King Herod 

 of old. Every now and ihen you may meet with the distended and 

 dried skin of a toad, concealing and containing absolutely nothing but 

 bones and the few viscera that are absolutely necessary to maintain 

 existence in its most enfeebled condition. The flesh has been slowly 

 eaten away by the maggots of the Musca vomiloria, or some allied 

 dipteron : many species of Musca and Anlhomyia assist in this 

 horrible task. 



There is no link in the chain of evidence on this subject missing; 

 we have the most unquestionable accounts of the fly intruding on the 

 privacy of the toad in his retreat. " It is singular," says a writer in 

 Loudon's ' Magazine of Natural History,' "that the blue-bottle fly 

 should persecute the toad in his retreat from the mid-day sun, 

 apparently mistaking the ill-favoured creature for some filthy sub- 

 stance which would serve as a pabulum for its young;" the writer 

 evidently hinting at a fact in natural history which he was quite un- 



