No. 515] 



IRE AMERICAN TOAD 



crease rapidly. We may do much by way of increase 

 of insectivorous birds, and even bats may prove valuable 

 allies. We may be grateful for the help of predaceous 

 and parastic insects, and good work has been done in 

 importing parasites of foreign insect pests, but clearly 

 we need all the assistance we can find ; and all the above 

 agencies are scarcely controllable enough to be depended 

 upon. 



For an insectivorous animal which conforms to every 

 requirement of the situation, ease of control and rapid 

 increase, non-injurious, in any numbers, an active feeder 

 in abundance and a patient faster in scarcity, the toad 

 stands probably first on the list among American insec- 

 tivorous animals. Experiments are now being carried 

 on also with the bob white or American quail with every 

 prospect that this form may prove of equal, if not supe- 

 rior, efficiency, and it will carry added values, in food, 

 sport and weed-seed destruction; but this species is 

 rapidly being exterminated from a large portion of its 

 former range, and it will require a long time for methods 

 of propagation and protection to be worked out and be- 

 come generally known. 



A good deal of unnecessary balancing of accounts has 

 been done of late in attempting to calculate the economic 

 value of species from analysis of the foods. In some 

 cases this has yielded results of some value, but, in gen- 

 eral, they have been misleading. Even a small percent- 

 age of the gross food of a hawk or shrike, for example, 

 if it consists of a valuable species, might render the 

 predaceous species injurious. In the case of beneficial 

 insects, excepting the honey bee which is under human 

 control, if a species will destroy all the injurious insects, 

 it detracts little or nothing from its efficiency, if it take 

 the beneficial insects as well. This principle applies 

 particularly to the toad, which takes everything in the 

 form of an insect, worm or slug that comes in its way. 



Instead of filling its stomach four times in twenty-four 

 tours, as Kirkland estimated, Mr. Miller finds that the 

 toad takes but a single meal a day. This is no discredit 



