Reptiles, $c. 3389 



Curious Propensity of a Toad. — In April, 1851, whilst digging in my garden, I 

 turned up from a depth of five or six inches, a living toad and a dead frog. The mouth 

 and front of the head of the toad being covered with gory matter, I thought I had cut 

 it with the spade, but observing it to move off without showing any signs of injury, I 

 was induced to examine it and found it unhurt. I then examined the frog, and found 

 it in a state of partial decomposition, with much of its fleshy substance removed. It 

 was therefore clear that the toad had been feasting upon the frog, and its plump ap- 

 pearance indicated the same conclusion. Five weeks previously I had dug over the 

 same piece of ground, when neither frog nor toad was there. Toads we know will bury 

 themselves in the ground, but I am not aware that frogs do ; and if not, the frog could 

 not have died there; and the question is, did the toad kill the frog? — or, having found 

 it dead, had the toad instinct enough to bury it, and thus reduce it to a state fitted for 

 its own food ? It could not, I apprehend, suck off the flesh whilst in a fresh state, 

 and, if left exposed to the sun and air at that season of the year, it would soon have 

 become dried up. These facts may or may not throw new light upon the economy of 

 the toad, and therefore, if irrelevant, I can only apologize to the readers of the 'Zoolo- 

 gist.' — William Turner; Barholme Vicarage, Stamford, January 30 , 1852. 



Name of Chesil Bank. — Were it not that the Chesil Bank is so favourite a place 

 of resort for the British Coleopterist, it would not be worth while pointing out a slight 

 error into which the Kev. J. P. Bartlett has fallen, in his interesting paper on " Cap- 

 tures of Coleopterous Insects" (Zool. 3354). It is, however, well that every pilgrim 

 to that rich locality should know the name Chesil is not. of foreign extraction, but is, 

 on the contrary, almost a pure old English word. Ceosel or ceosl was the term used by 

 our Anglo-Saxon forefathers for gravel or sand, and ceosel-stan for a pebble-stone. 

 Cheselys — pebbles on the sea-shore — occurs, it is said, in the ' Coventry Mysteries.' 

 The word has, notwithstanding, now almost entirely disappeared from our language, 

 others having usurped its place. Johnson and Webster preserve only chessom, " sandy 

 earth," and cheslip " a small vermin that lies underneath stones." The Saxons of 

 Wessex no doubt gave to the locality in question the name Ceosel-banc, which has 

 been at length' corrupted into Chesil-bank. The Germans derive their words Ides, 

 gravel, and kiesel, a pebble, through a cognate branch of the Teutonic dialect. The 

 original High German name for gravel was Ms, from which they formed kisil and 

 kisili, or chisili and their diminutives kisilinc and chisiling, the whole of these words 

 having for meaning coarser or finer gravel and pebbles. The Latin word cos, a whet- 

 stone, and the Bohemian kyz, having the same signification ; the Dutch hei and 

 keisteen, a pebble, and possibly the Spanish cascajo, a heap of small stones, are only 

 modifications of the same widely spread words, and which no doubt had a common 

 origin in some Sanscrit root. The search for this primeval relic I would recommend 

 to those having leisure and opportunity, and who may with propriety entertain the 

 notion that the occasional hunt after some antique root buried in musty old tomes, is 

 sport as exhilirating as groping on a raw November day for Cheslips amid the stones 

 and sandy flats of Chesil-bank.— Edwin Brown ; Burton-on Trent, February 7, 1852. 



