3658 Reptiles. 



fly when I saw them. This nest was built on the same frame-work, but more out of 

 the way of the artists, and not more than ten feet from the ground : it was composed 

 of a great quantity of old spiders' web, with the egg-bags of the garden spider, inter- 

 mixed with fine roots, bits of chip and string, and lined with fine hay. At an opposite 

 part of the garden there was another nest of spotted flycatchers, built between a large 

 lower branch and the main stem of a poplar tree, and containing five young birds ready 

 to fly at about the same time as those in the first nest. This pair of birds likewise had 

 a second nest of four young ones ; this was built against the stem of a tree, and partly 

 supported by a more slender stem that grew close to it, in the shrubbery, and near the 

 situation of that in the poplar tree. In woody situations I have taken several hand- 

 some nests of this bird out of old faggot-stacks : they were composed of fine roots, hay, 

 &c, and very prettily studded with different mosses and gray lichens. The eggs are 

 four or five in number, with a bluish ground-colour, speckled all over with reddish and 

 yellowish brown. The birds are common in most large gardens, and are familiar, and 

 not easily made to forsake the spot they are used to. — W. H. Thomas ; 15, Hanover 

 St., Walworth, October 4, 1852. 



The Poison of the Toad. — Popular tradition has from time iminemoiial attached 

 a poisonous influence to the toad, but enlightened opinion presumed that the idea was 

 an ignorant prejudice. All doubts, however, as to the poisonous nature of the con- 

 tents of the skin-pustules of the toad and salamander lizard are set at rest by the re- 

 cent experiments of two French philosophers, MM. Gratiolet and S. Cloez, who by 

 inoculating various animals with the cutaneous poison of toads and salamanders, have 

 demonstrated that the substances in question are endowed with well marked and ex- 

 ceedingly dangerous qualities. The first experiment of these gentlemen was prose- 

 cuted on a little African tortoise, which was inoculated with some of the toad-poison 

 in one of its hinder feet; paralysis of the limb supervened, and still existed at the ex- 

 piration of eight months, thus demonstrating the possibility of local poisoning by the 

 agent. In order to determine whether the poisonous material spoiled by keeping, the 

 two gentlemen procured about 29 grains of the poison, on the 25th of April, 1851, and 

 having placed it aside until the 16th of March, 1852, they inoculated a goldfinch with 

 a little of this material. The bird almost immediately died. Subsequently the inves- 

 tigators succeeded in eliminating the poisonous principle from the inert matters with 

 which it is associated in the skin-pustules, and they found that when thus purified its 

 effects are greatly more intense than before. Like most of the known very strong or- 

 ganic poisons, the active principle of toad-venom is alkaline in its character, almost 

 insoluble in water, slightly soluble in ether, and very soluble in alcohol. MM. Gra- 

 tiolet and S. Cloez are at this time occupied in collecting a large amount of toad-ve- 

 nom, and will shortly make known the result of their further investigations, which are 

 calculated, in the opinion of the investigators, to throw considerable light upon the 

 nature and action of the poisons of hydrophobia, of serpents, of contagious diseases, 

 and animal poisons generally. — Ed. Zool. 



Note on the Egyptian Cobra. — When several of these deadly venomous snakes are 

 confined together in one cage or apartment, they must be closely watched, as they are 

 very likely to devour each other. Half a dozen live sparrows, with their flight-feathers 

 p&lled out, to keep them at the bottom of the cage, were put into the same apartment 



