Rana and Bufo. 181 
COMMON AMERICAN TOAD. 
How He Manages a Difficulty. 
Toads can be tamed and taught to eat from the hand. 
They are easily beguiled with sugar and with bread that 
has been soaked in milk, but, like a captious child, they eat 
only the middle out of the slice, and leave the crust. We once 
saw a toad, a noble fellow he was, who, at a certain hour of 
the closing day, would come from his gloomy retreat to 
receive at the hands of man his supper of flies, which he 
had been trained to catch on the throw. So unerringly 
would his tongue dart out at the opportune moment, that he 
seldom, if ever, shot wide of his mark. It is amusing to 
observe him when, in his greed and haste, he has attempted 
to swallow a huge grasshopper whose legs will not accom- 
modate themselves to his peculiar gape of mouth. How he 
swallows and twists and contracts the walls of his throat, 
but the legs seem unmanageable. He does not give up, or 
endeavor to eject the half-swallowed body, but ponders the 
matter over and over. A look of delight beams out of his 
eyes, that shows he has managed the problem. Up goes to 
the mouth the right fore-leg, and, in less time than it takes 
