Embedded Reptiles. By the President. 505 



Besides, a recognition by us of eases like the present, which 

 always make astir, a careful examination of the details, and a 

 record of them in our Proceedings, is but the legitimate fulfilment 

 of one of the principal objects for which our Club exists. 



The Frog died on the 3rd May, 1885. 



ADDENDUM. 



I have to express my thanks to the Rev. Dr. Gordon, Birnie, Elgin ; and 

 more particularly to my old friend the Revd. Robert Boog Watson, Card- 

 ross, Dumbarton, for kind and interesting communications on the subject 

 of Embedded Reptiles. 



\_Since the foregoing Paper was read to the Club, Mr Hardy found the 

 following notice of an imprisoned Toad among the scientific MSS. 

 left by Mr George Tate, which will be read with interest.'] 



On a Toad in a Litnestone Rock at Whittle. By the late 

 George Tate, F. G. S. 



At Whittle, in the parish of Shilbottle, is an extensive Lime- 

 stone Quarry, having a direction of N.N.E. to S.S.W. The 

 limestone is the same as Tate's Quarry at Shilbottle and as that 

 worked at Newton-on-the-Moor. It appears at Framlington, 

 west of Brinkburn, Pothley, Kirkharle and other places south- 

 ward, and it is said to run near to Stagshaw Bank. The thickness 

 of it varies. 



In April 1856, a living Toad was said to have been found in 

 limestone rock at Whittle. It was in the middle of a large block 

 which was blasted with gunpowder. When the rock was 

 shivered, the Toad was exposed. It was in a cavity, just large 

 enough for the Toad's accommodation. The Toad breathed a few 

 times, stretched out its feet and then died. It was larger than 

 any my informant ever saw, and he had seen many, and of a 

 very dark colour approaching to black. 



The workmen had no doubt of the animal having lived in the 

 middle of the stone, but how came it there ? Geology at once 

 scouts the idea of its having been enclosed in the rock at its 

 formation; for the limestone is of marine origin, and Toads 

 lived not then. Nor will physiology sanction the notion that it 

 had been generated there by electrical or other merely physical 



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