UNNATURAL NATURAL HISTORY 47 
the prisoner to escape from its enforced 
domicile. 
Mr. Buckland, in his well-known book, 
Curiosities of Natural History , gives an inter¬ 
esting account of experiments made by his 
father to demonstrate the falsity of the state¬ 
ment that toads could be entombed alive 
without air or food, and yet live for a number 
of years. He prepared two blocks of stone, 
one of sandstone and another of limestone, 
making twelve holes in each measuring about 
five inches in diameter. Glass lids, cemented 
along the edges with clay so as to render the 
enclosures impervious to air, were then placed 
over the top of the holes ; and into each ol 
these cells he introduced a live toad, and 
buried the stones beneath the ground to a 
depth of three feet. After an interval of 
thirteen months the stones were dug up and 
the imprisoned toads examined through the 
glass lids. Those which had been enclosed in 
the sandstone were dead, but those placed 
within the more porous limestone were still 
alive ; the small amount of air and moisture 
that permeated through the latter substance 
proving sufficient to sustain the inmates in a 
more or less torpid condition, while, moreover, 
it is more than probable that minute insects 
found their way through the limestone and so 
