INTKODUCTION. 641 



The Musk Tortoise, Serpents, Tree and Common Toad are illustrations of 

 this. No person has ever handled the Common Garter Snake alive with- 

 out finding his hands for sometime afterwards tainted with a very dis- 

 gusting odor. Rattlesnakes, on sufficient irritation, have been 

 known to emit a yellow or brownish fluid, and a very oflensive smell. 

 In like manner the consequences of annoying the Spreading Adder are 

 very unpleasant to one's olfactory organs. Also, Fityophis is said to 

 emit an odor equally disagreeable, and the Tree Progs have an acrid ex- 

 cretion. 



According to Rainey's* experiments the secretions of the Common Toad 

 are irritating, acrid, and capable of producing a smarting sensation like 

 aconite. Dr. Blick's account of the half drunken man, who, in a wager, 

 bit off the head of a toad, and paid for his experiment by an alarming 

 swelling of lips, tongue, and throat, and Dumeril and Bibron's f observa- 

 tion that the emanations from these animals seemed to have an ill-efiect 

 upon others when confined together with them, with the fact that a dog 

 will not touch a toad, render it probable that they secrete a matter by 

 the glands on their exterior, which is very important to them as a 

 means of protection. While this is true, the common belief that 

 handling them is productive of warts or other deleterious efiects is utterly 

 without foundation, and has its counterpart in the belief of the common 

 people of Great Britain, that if a person afflicted with warts handles a 

 toad it will effect a cure. There is, however, according to Escobar J a 

 South American toad, Phyllobates melanorhina, which secretes a venom of so 

 great virulence that it is extracted and used by the Indians for poisoning 

 their arrows. This venom is sufficient to effect the death of large ani- 

 mals, like the Jaguar, and is equally fatal to man, exerting its toxic 

 effect by acting upon the organs of sensibility and motion. 



The ordinary course of development is for Frogs and Toads, when about 

 to deposit their eggs, to seek the water of some pond, ditch, or brook, and 

 there they pair, the eggs being fecundated as they are emitted. 

 The young when hatched are gill breathing animals, and hence incapable 

 of existing without water. However, the young sometimes appear in 

 cellars and gardens with high walls, which, as Lowe, Jenyns, || and 



* Mioios. Jonrn., London, 1858, p. 457. 



t Erpetologie Generale, Suite a Bufibn, Tome 8, p. 184. 



i Comptes EenduB, Tome 68, p. 1488. 



I Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 1853, pp. 341 and 483. 



41 



