20 

 THROUGH FIELD AND MEADOW. 



Let us drop our business cares for awhile and hie away 

 to the fields. Perhaps we can find something to while 

 away the time for a few hours. We certainly can: — Show 

 me an acre field dotted with a few thorn bushes and oc- 

 casional blackberry vines and I will show you material 

 enough to keep a naturalist busy for years. 



Perhaps the first thing we spy is a toad, — just a plain, 

 every-day, hop-toad. Here is a good study, — where do 

 toads come from, what do they do and where do they go? 

 We will pry a little into the affairs of 



THE AMERICAN TOAD (Bufo americanus). 



We do not even have to go to the fields to study the 

 habits of toads for we can find them on the lawns or in the 

 gardens about houses even in cities. A long-limbed, sleek, 

 brightly-marked frog may be regarded as an object of 

 beauty but a toad cannot be so considered; squat, fat, lazy 

 and covered with a rough, warty skin, they are the ver}' 

 opposite of frogs in comeliness. But, we will not judge 

 them by appearances but by actions ; they are insect de- 

 stroyers of the highest order. While they sleep all win- 

 ter, they eat quadruple rations all the rest of the year for 

 their digestion is very rapid, requiring that their stomach 

 be completely filled about four times each day. I believe 

 it has been estimated that owing to the nature and quantity 

 of ihsects captured by toads, that each individual toad is 

 worth to the community the sum of nineteen dollars and 

 eighty-eight cents. 



We will watch a toad closely and see what insects he 

 eats and how such an apparently slow creature is able 

 to catch them. The best way to see how his food is taken 

 is to place him on a piazza or in the back yard M-here flies 

 are fairly abundant. And, slow as the toad appears, vou 

 will have to watch very closely. He keeps perfectly still, 

 a fly alights within about two inches of him, his mouth 

 opens, — and the fly is gone. He was too quick for us that 



