174 



THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



it bears, it leads a quiet inoffensive and useful life. Though common and 

 generally distributed, comparatively few toads are to be seen during a country 

 walk: this arises from the retiring and nocturnal habits of the reptile. 

 Gardens seem to be a particularly favoured haunt of the toad, and for cellars 

 also it has a great liking. I have seen toads in cellars in the suburbs of 

 London, and still more commonly in the country, and have often wondered 

 how they contrived to pick up a living in such places. 



Cellars, however, are a favourite resort for many animals. In the cellar 

 of a house in Berkshire, which cellar is many feet below the surface of the 

 ground, lived and flourished, at different times, to my knowledge, quite a 

 small menagerie, consisting of the following members of the British fauna — 

 a toad with a most decided tendency to embonpoint, two ditto not quite so 

 lusty, two or three frogs with a greater tendency the other way, several 

 warty newts large and small, a long-eared bat [Plecotus auritus) hung up 

 by its hind-claws to a beam, several garden snails [Helix aspersa) clustered 

 near the window, many yellow, spotted, brown, and green slugs dragging 

 their slimy lengths on the walls, a gorgeous peacock butterfly [Vanessa io) 

 perched on the window frame, several devil's coach-horses [Ocypus o lens) , and 

 ground beetles [CarabiJ, as well as clouds of gnats and flies, and hundreds of 

 spiders. I have found many a worse place in which to study Nature than 

 that old cellar in Berkshire. 



The toad occurs commonly in all parts of the United Kingdom, with the 

 exception of Ireland, where we have no record of its ever having occurred in 

 a truly wild state. Both the frog and the toad are often of very local habits. 

 A writer in Science Gossip, speaking of a place near Stroud in Gloucester- 

 shire says : — " Toadsmoor Yalley gets its name from the number of frogs and 

 toads that swarm there. On a warm, damp night it is hardly possible to 

 avoid treading on them. It is easy to see how a story of a toad in a rock 

 might occur here, as they retire to all sorts of crevices in the oolite, which is 

 very damp, and would very likely turn up in quarrying, At the end of 

 June w r hen I first went there, all the young frogs, which were blackish, and 

 about three-quarters of an inch long, were leaving the pond at the bottom of 

 the valley, and beginning the ascent of the hills. There were swarms of 

 them, and they went steadily hopping over the path and up into the woods. 

 They continued doing this all the month. One lot I noticed in the afternoon 

 were going up over the path for a long time, and when I looked at them 

 again they had all as if by one consent turned, and were progressing along 

 at right angles to their former course, for what reason I was not able to find 

 out. The owner of the furthest up mill in the valley tells me that his mill- 

 pond used to be filled up with spawn, but since some change in the chemicals 



