GREEN LIZARD 
71 
been procured for you in Devonshire ; because it corroborates 
mj discovery, which I made many years ago, of the same sort, 
on a sunny sandbank near Farnham, in Surrey. I am well 
acquainted with the south hams of Devonshire ; and can sup- 
pose that district, from its southerly situation, to be a proper 
habitation for such animals in their best colours 
Since the ring-ousels of your vast mountains do certainly not 
forsake them against winter, our suspicions that those which 
visit this neighbourhood about Michaelmas are not Enghsh 
birds, but driven from the more northern parts of Europe by the 
frosts, are still more reasonable ; and it will be worth your pains 
bility of enduring for apparently almost indefinite periods enclosed within a mass of stone or of grow 
ing timber, various instances of which — many resting on most respectable authority— must have 
occurred within the reading of almost every person. Of course numerous experiments have been 
instituted in order to throw light upon so strange a phenomenon, from which, however, little 
can be satislactorily deduced, save that — at least in ordinary cases — the ingress of some air is 
necessary, or the creafure very shortly ceases to exist. Mr. Jesse informs us that he knew a 
geutl^iman who put a toiad into a small flower-pot, and secured it so that no insect could pene- 
trate it (which latter is,;feowever, in all probability a mistake), and then buried it so deep in his 
garden that it was secured from the influence of frost. At the end of twenty years he took it up, 
and found the toad i^icreased in bulk, and healthy. It has generally happened that, on the 
creature being restored to air and light, after having been so long immured, its death has fol- 
lowed almost immediately, probably in consequence of its too sudden liberation, an opinion which 
is streagtluuie;! by the foilowiiig very credible narration, the accuracy of which I see no reason 
to quesuoii, ;iiul wliich was furnished me incidentally by an intelligent quarryman, of whom I 
was seeking some information with regard to fossils. A toad, that had been extricated unhurt 
from the interior of a block of limestone, was, he informed me, kept by his fellow workmen as a 
curiosity, and placed under a tumbler glass, where it lived about three weeks, at the expiration 
of which time it managed to effect its escape, thus showing that, when not too suddenly exposed 
to the free air, the animal wiM survive its release. I am inclined to imagine, also, that the well- 
known experiments of Dr. Buckland on this subject would have been more satisfactory, had the 
creatures been gradually inured to close imprisonment. In ordinary cases it is probably a long 
time before the entrance of the cavity into which a toad had crept becomes completely closed, 
under which circumstances it may be, as indeed Dr. Buckland suggests, that, " deprived of food 
and air, it might fall into that state of torpor or suspended animation to which certain animals 
are subject in winter, but how long it might continue in that state is uncertain." 1 do not re- 
member to have heard of any but living toads being found immured. This animal can, indeed, 
insinuate itself into so small an orifice as to astonish any person who has not witnessed it ; and 
in retreats into which it can but just squeeze itself it very commonly retires to pass the winter. 
Thus it is that it not unfrequently contrives to locate itself in cavities whence it finds itself un- 
able to emerge, stalactitic incrastations or fortuitous accumulations opposing its re-passage from 
the interior of a rock, while the latter, or the growth of wood around the entrance, encloses it 
within the hollow of a tree. In either situation it would subsist for a time on the insects which 
continually crawl into sueh places, while its constitution would perhaps be gradually preparing 
to fall into that lethargic state above adverted to. 
It must not be concealed, however, that this is merely a hypothetical supposition, though it 
would seem to be the most rational mode of accounting for the phenomenon. I am not aware 
that the animal has ever been found in other than a wakeful state. 
The same sluggish tenaciousness of life appears to be evinced also by certain other species of 
amuhibia, though probably not quite to the same extent. Capt. Brown relates of the triton pnhis- 
h'is, an animal which in its general aspect seems to hold much the same relation to the smooth- 
skmned newts which the toads do to the frogs, and which, perhaps, ought to constitute a dis- 
tinct minimum division, that he '* once found a vei*y large specimen of it in an old wooden 
conduit at Fountain-bridge, Edinburgh, which had been stopped at both ends for upwards of 
twenty years. The animal must have been at least that age, as it was not possible that it couki 
obtain access from the time the conduit was stopped." — Ed. 
