TOAD. | NATURAL HISTORY. 309 
for they eat so much every day as they can grip ‘in their 
fore-foot, as it were. sizing themselves, lest the whole earth 
should not serve them, till the spring. They also love to 
eat sage, and yet the root of. sage is to them deadly 
poison, They destroy bees, without all danger to them- 
selves, for they will creep to the holes of their hives, and 
there blow in upon the bees, by which breath they draw 
them out of the hive and so destroy them as they come 
out. About their generation, there are many worthy ob- 
servations in nature; sometimes they are bred out of the , 
putrefaction and corruption of the earth; it hath also been - 
seen, that, out of the ashes of a Toad burnt, not only one, 
but many Toads, have been regenerated the year following. 
In the New World there is a province called Darien, the 
air whereof is wonderful unwholesome, because all the 
country standeth upon rotten marshes. It is there observed, 
that when the slaves, or servants water the pavements of 
the doors, from the drops of water which fall on the right 
hand are instantly many Toads engendered, as in other 
places such drops of water are turned into gnats. It hath 
also been seen that women conceiving with child have like- 
wise conceived at the same time a frog, or a Toad, or a 
lizard. And for this cause, women, at such time as their 
child beginneth to quicken in their womb, do drink the 
juice of parsley and leeks, to kill such conceptions if any 
be. But in men’s stomachs there are found frogs and 
Toads. This evil happeneth unto such men as drink water. 
And Toads are bred in the bodies of men, and yet after- 
wards these Toads do kill the bodies they are bred in; for 
the venom is so tempered, that at last it worketh when it 
is come to ripeness. For the casting out of such a Toad 
bred in the body, they take a serpent and [disem |bowel 
him; then they cut off the head and the tail; the residue 
of the body they likewise part into small pieces, which they 
seethe in water and take off the fat which swimmeth at 
the top, which the sick person drinketh, until by vomiting 
he avoid all the Toads in his stomach. Toads sometimes 
in anger lift up themselves, for great is their wrath, 
obstinacy, and desire to be revenged upon their adversaries, 
especially the red Toad; for if she take hold of any thing 
in her mouth, she will never let it go till she die, and 
many times she sendeth forth poison out of her buttocks * 
