NATURE NOTES 
76 
Sussex, also writes : “ Some years ago I killed two large adders and laid them 
on the grass close to the house. To my surprise, when I saw them the next 
morning, there were six young ones all dead lying in front and close to the 
adder’s mouth, the last one only partly out. I had several people to look at 
them. The young ones were about six inches long : the large ones just over two 
feet.” 
The following extract from the Rev. Gilbert White’s “ Natural History of 
Selborne,” Letter xvii., bears on this subject : “ Several intelligent folks assure me 
that they have seen the viper open her mouth and admit her helpless young down 
her throat on sudden surprises, just as the opossum does her brood into the pouch 
under her belly, upon the like emergencies ; and yet the London viper-catchers 
insist on it, to Mr. Barrington, that no such thing ever happens.” 
Perhaps some Selbornians can record authentic instances of adders swallowing 
their young, or favour us with their opinions thereon. 
St. A/flans, Herts. W. Percivai. Westell, M.B.O.U. 
March 10, 1901. 
The Amazing Toad. — The toad that was lately found in a lump of coal, 
is but one other instance of the way in which the queer, uncanny-looking little 
creature can live, seemingly, without air, food, drink — any, in fact, of the neces- 
saries of animal or even vegetable life, for an untold length of time. It can also 
make its home anywhere. Other creatures, whether inhabitants of earth, air, or 
water, have their own special climatic conditions of life. Not so the toad, for it 
has given us plenty of evidence to let us know that it can live as long, probably 
much longer, and thrive as well in a lump of coal, a block of granite, or even a 
slab of marble, as under an old rain-water butt in a damp back garden. 
The very appearance of the toad suggests the “hole” which is popularly 
associated with its name ; but to the beholder’s thinking, the cavity should mean 
mud. slush, and slime, anything cold, clammy and slippery, like the weird, 
lonesome little being itself. Of all living things it looks the least capricious, yet 
none — as facts show — have such amazing whims. 
It was about three-and-thirty years ago a toad was found embedded in a solid 
block of rock, twenty-five feet below ground, where it is supposed it must have 
existed for 6,000 years ! The news of its discovery created much sensation at the 
time, and vast numbers of people went to see it at the Hartlepool Museum, where 
it had been lodged in an aquarium. It was not only alive but very lively (for a 
toad) despite the fact that it found some trouble over its first attempts at breathing. 
It had scarcely, however, seen three months a’oove the surface of the earth when 
it died, the victim, it is supposed, of some prank perpetrated by over curiosity on 
the part of one of a party of “ trippers” from Newcastle. 
A running rival to this “ Toad in Hole ” story, is that told of the finding of the 
queer little hermit in a marble mantelpiece at Ctiillingham Castle, the Northum- 
brian home of the Earls of Tankerville. Moreover, it was right in the middle of 
a great slab of the marble, not in any chink or join, and large, alive, and apparently 
thriving to boot. The mystery of how it got there can only be explained or 
rather supposed — in one way. Very many years ago that block of hard marble 
was soft, pliant clay in its quarry deep down under the earth. Thither the small 
reclus^ groped to make itself a home, and there it stayed, willy-nillv, for years 
that are almost past computing. This toad story is vouched for by Wallis and 
Hutchinson, as quoted in Gough’s Camden of 1789. 
Toads have been found in the centre of the trunks of large trees by woodmen 
engaged in the task of splitting them open. In the diary of Abraham de la 
Pryme, which was in the keeping of the Surtees Society, mention is made of 
a toad found in this way, which the old antiquarian witnessed himself. He 
further adds, that there was no discoverable means by which the toad could have 
got into the tree. This happened in Yorkshire, in 1697. Of the three “ Toad 
Holes” mentioned, the wooden sounds, for a toad, morehomelike than the stone, 
coal, or marble one. These, however, are not by any means the only tenements 
of which it takes its rentless lease for any number of years. In sandstone and in 
iron-ore it will exist, although buried alive, while from America — the land of big- 
happenings — comes a tale of a toad so ferocious at being found out, that he 
scarcely let the finder escape with his life. This is, however, capped by what 
