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 minutiae 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 

 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 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 take 

 in and reject liquids, through their skin alone, by a rapid process of 

 absorption and evaporation, — a frog absorbing sometimes in half an 

 hour as much as half its own weight, and in a {ew hours the whole of 

 of its own weight of water, and nearly as rapidly giving it off when 

 placed in any position that is warm and removed from moistnre. Dr. 

 T. 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 • 

 « 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 

 I have often tasted, as that of frogs." 



