3872 Notices of New Books. 



warm damp straw all summer. It is after these beds have remained 

 three or four months that the young ones have been noticed. Toads 

 would have to travel nearly half a mile to reach this garden from the 

 brook or lake, and also to mount a steep hill, besides taking the op- 

 portunity of coming through the door. Toads so small are not seen 

 in any other part of the gardens." 



The occurrence of toads, large and small, in walled gardens, and 

 especially about cucumber-frames, is very familiar to me : it may be 

 a question how they get there, but other solutions to the difficulty may 

 be proposed quite as plausible as the supposition that Nature has so 

 widely deviated from her ordinary course. A well-authenticated in- 

 stance of a toad's vagaries is before me : — a singularly fine specimen 

 was shut in a small empty room, to await immersion in spirits, when 

 the etceteras could be procured ; on opening the door of the room he 

 was missing, and was eventually found sitting peacefully on the ledge 

 over the door. 



" Thirdly : — Young Toads and Frogs observed in abundance at 

 the summit of another hill, whilst quite small. 



" During the past summer, especially in the month of July, very 

 many young toads and frogs were seen amongst strawberry-plants, 

 apparently from a week to a month old. These might possibly have 

 travelled from the brook a few hundred yards distant; yet it is strange, 

 that with the exception of these beds, no young toads could be found 

 elsewhere in the garden. A number of full-grown toads are mostly to 

 be seen about these beds." 



Such an occurrence is very common, indeed it is observable every 

 summer ; but it does not appear to bear on the subject under discus- 

 sion, it merely shows that toads, whether large or small, are fond of 

 strawberry-beds. 



" Fourthly : — Young Frogs dug out of the ground in the month of 

 January. 



<; In digging in the garden amongst the strawberry-beds (near where 

 so many toads were observed last summer), in the middle of January 

 in the present year, a nest of young frogs were upturned. These were 

 apparently three or four weeks old. This ground had been previously 

 dug in the month of August, and many strawberry-plants buried ; it 

 was amongst a mass of these plants in a state of partial decomposition, 

 that these young ones were observed." 



There is a non sequitur here : surely the young frogs are not sup- 

 posed to have been the issue of the old toads ! and their occurrence 

 in the ground does not at all support the author's view, for it is quite 



