90 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
squinancy-wort, daisies, and milkwort, both white 
and blue. 
The toad, as a rule, strikes one as rather an 
ugly creature, but this one sitting on the green 
- turf, with those variously coloured fairy flowers all 
about him, looked almost beautiful. He was very 
dark, almost black, and with his shining topaz eyes 
had something of the appearance of a yellow-eyed 
black cat. I sat down by his side and picked him 
up, which action he appeared to regard as an 
unwarrantable liberty on my part; but when I 
placed him on my knee and began stroking his 
blackish corrugated back with my finger-tips his 
anger vanished, and one could almost imagine his 
golden eyes and wide lipless mouth smiling with 
satisfaction. 
A good many flies were moving about at that 
spot—a pretty fly whose name I do not know, a 
little bigger than a house-fly, all a shining blue, 
with head and large eyes a bright red. These flies 
kept lighting on my hand, and by and by I 
cautiously moved a hand until a fly on it was 
within tongue-distance of the toad, whereupon the 
red tongue flicked out like lightning and the fly 
vanished. Again the process was repeated, and 
altogether I put over half-a-dozen flies in his way, 
and they all vanished in the same manner, so 
quickly that the action eluded my sight. One 
moment and a blue and red-headed fly was on my 
hand sucking the moisture from the skin, and then, 
lo! he was gone, while the toad still sat there 
