INTRODUCTION. 641 
The Musk Tortoise, Serpents, Tree and Common Toad are illustrations of 
this. No person has ever handled the Common Garter Snake alive with- 
out finding his hands for sometime afterwards tainted with a very dis- 
gusting odor. Rattlesnakes, on sufficient irritation, have been 
known to emit a yellow or brownish fluid, and a very offensive smell. 
In like manner the consequences of annoying the Spreading Adder are 
very unpleasant to one’s olfactory organs. Also, Pityophis is said to 
emit an odor equally disagreeable, and the Tree Frogs have an acrid ex- 
cretion. 
According to Rainey’s* experiments the secretions of the Common Toad 
are irritating, acrid, and capable of producing a smarting sensation like 
aconite. Dr. Blick’s account of the half drunken man, who, in a wager, 
bit off the head of atoad, and paid for his experiment by an alarming 
swelling of lips, tongue, and throat, and Dumeril and Bibron’s f observa- 
tion that the emanations from these animals seemed to have an ill-effect 
upon others when confined together with them, with the fact that a dog 
will not touch a toad, render it probable that they secrete a matter by 
the glands on their exterior, which is very important to them as a 
means of protection. While this is true, the common belief that 
handling them is productive of warts or other deleterious effects is utterly 
without foundation, and has its counterpart in the belief of the common 
people of Great Britain, that if a person afflicted with warts handles a 
toad it will effect a cure. There is, however, according to Escobar{ a 
South American toad, Phyllobates melanorhina, which secretes a venom of so 
great virulence that it is extracted and used by the Indians for poisoning 
their arrows. This venom is sufficient to effect the death of large ani- 
mals, like the Jaguar, and is equally fatal to man, exerting its toxic 
effect by acting upon the organs of sensibility and motion. 
The ordinary course of development is for Frogs and Toads, when about 
to deposit their eggs, to seek the water of some pond, ditch, or brook, and 
there they pair, the eggs being fecundated as they are emitted. 
The young when hatched are gill breathing animals, and hence incapable 
of existing without water. However, the young sometimes appear in 
cellars and gardens with high walls, which, as Lowe, Jenyns, || and 
* Micros. Journ., London, 1858, p. 457. 
t Erpetologie Generale, Suite a Buffon, Tome 8, p. 184. 
{ Comptes Rendus, Tome 68, p. 1488. 
| Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 1853, pp. 341 and 483. 
41 
