178 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[ August, 
and then seedlings with fruit of a larger size, and with their early habits, may be 
obtained. I have tried this with the Early Beatrice this spring, fertilising it 
with the Dagmar Peach, another fine large high-coloured sort of Mr. Rivers’s 
raising. 
There has been little advance yet in raising seedling Nectarines of earlier- 
ripening habits, Mr. Rivers’s Lord Napier being the only large kind; but it is 
generally the middle of August before it ripens. Fairchild’s Early Newington and 
Hunt’s Tawny ripen with me in the beginning of August, but they produce very 
small fruit, and the Tawny is very liable to mildew. To prolong the Nectarine 
season some earlier-ripening varieties are much wanted, for there are plenty of 
mid-season and late sorts now grown. Albert Victor , Prince of Wales , and 
Victoria are very excellent late kinds, which prolong the Nectarine season till 
the end of October on the open walls. The Victoria , however, having some of 
the Stan wick Nectarine blood in it, requires a warm autumn to ripen well out of 
doors. When forced, it is the largest of Nectarines, and has a peculiarly rich 
flavour when well grown and coloured. —William Tillery, Welbeck. 
TOADS AND THE GOOSEBERRY-GRUB.* 
jN the year 1848, Mr. Leadbitter, of Gray’s Inn Road, sent me a circum- 
C$2 stantial account of the doings of a Toad in re Gooseberry-grub, an account 
that riveted my attention at the time, and the impression of which remains 
sharp and clear on my memory. The facts of the case here narrated by Mr. 
Leadbitter have been abundantly verified by subsequent observations of my own. 
This gentleman was staying near Dorking, and observed that three or four 
currant-bushes nailed against a garden wall were stripped of their leaves by these 
ubiquitous garden pests, which were swarming all over the bare twigs and cling¬ 
ing to stumps of the leaf-stalks. Squatting on the bare earth, in the angle of 
the garden wall, was a corpulent toad, waiting for “ something to turn up,” or 
perhaps, speaking by the card, for u something to come down.” The “ happy 
thought” occurred to Mr. Leadbitter that this u something ” must be a goose¬ 
berry-grub, so he collected a quantity of the grubs, induced one of them to crawl 
on the end of a short stick, and presented the grub to the toad. After a very 
short pause, the grub began to crawl up the stick. Then there was a move¬ 
ment of the toad’s head and neck, and in an instant the grub was gone— 
he had descended alive into a living tomb, the stomach of the toad. The 
naturalist then continued to supply the toad with this living diet until his collec¬ 
tion of grubs was exhausted. On the following afternoon, and so on day after 
day, Mr. Leadbitter and the toad repaired to the same feeding-place, until no 
more grubs could be found, when the toad returned no more. 
The process of eating is this:—The tongue of the toad is thrown forward so 
as to touch the grub, and then as quickly withdrawn—the grub adhering to its 
* Abridged from the Field. 
