a Be 
NOTE ON BUFO AMERICANUS. 661 
ground. He lost, by some accident, one eye, and it was observed 
by several members of the family, as well as myself, that he had 
with it lost his ability to pick up a bee at the first trial; his 
tongue struck the ground on one side the bee: but after several 
weeks’ practice with one eye he regained his old certainty of aim. 
I have never seen our toad use his hands to crowd his food into 
his mouth as the European toad is said to do; although he uses 
them freely to wipe out of his mouth any inedible or disagreeable 
substance. When our toad gets into his mouth part of an insect 
too large for his tongue to thrust down his throat (and I have 
known of their attempting full grown larve of Sphinx quinquemac- 
ulatus, and even a wounded hummingbird) he resorts to the 
nearest stone or clod and presses the protruding part of his 
mouthful against it and thus crowds it down his throat. This 
can be observed at any time by entangling a locust’s hind legs to- 
gether and throwing it before a small toad. 
On one occasion I gave a ‘‘yellow-striped” locust to a little 
toad in its second summer, when he was in the middle of a very 
wide gravel walk. In a moment he had the locust’s head down 
his throat, its hinder parts protruding; and looked around for a 
stone or clod, but finding none at hand, in either direction, he 
bowed his head, and crept along, pushing the locust against the 
ground. But the angle with the ground was too small and my 
walk too well rolled. To increase the angle he straightened his 
hind legs up, but in vain. At length he threw up his hind 
quarters, and actually stood on his head, or rather on the locust 
sticking out of his mouth,—and after repeating this once or 
twice succeeded in “getting himself outside of his dinner 
But these instances of ingenious adaptation to the circum- 
stances, were exceeded by a toad about four years old at Antioch 
college. I was tossing him earth worms while digging, and pres- 
ently threw him so large a specimen that he was obliged to attack 
one end only. That end was instantly transferred to his stomach, 
the other end writhed free in air, and coiled about the toad’s head. 
He waited till its writhings gave him a chance, swallowed half an 
inch, then taking a nip with his jaws, waited for a chance to draw 
in another half-inch. But there were so many half-inches to dis- 
pose of that at length his jaws grew tired, lost their firmness of 
grip, and the worm crawled out five-eighths of an inch, between 
each half-inch swallowing. The toad, perceiving this, brought his 
