The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-10-24

ana 1alrIy oblE1ng me 10 cheCk my horse, or
crush them by hundreds. My humanity made
no impression on a flock of depraved ducks
and ducklipgs that followed this phalanx of
frogs, and gobbled these batrachian infants up
Cor DOWN, with appettes that seemed inap-
peasable.
Such of these juvenile reptiles as escape the
early perils OF migration and transmigration
grow rapidly in size and some of them attain
to a good old age. Toads, known to be four
teen fifteen, or sixteen years old, are not un-
common. Pennant gives a very interesting
account cf one that was dOmesticated in an
English family for upwards of six-and- thirty
years. His iavorite abode and winter retreat
was under the house door-steps. OF course
he burrowed there, and remained out of sight
except in warm weather. He knew his
master, and would come forth at
his approach. At candle. light he came
out regularly to receive his supper.
Often, to crafty curious visitors, he was
brought into the house and placed ON the
table for exhibition, manitesting the utmost
GOODNESS and self-possession in polite society,
and seizing with wonderful celerity every in
sect offered for his entertainment. He grew
to prodigious size, and showed no sign of
infTmity up to the day when fate fell on him
in the fell shape of raven whose ravenous
beak, in spite of gallant and persistent de-
fense, inflicted on his aged frame wounds
whereof he never recovered but of which, or
the effects of which, after some months lnger-
ing, he died. Sic transit gloria bujoaiS
But forty-year- old toad in our climate has
really had an active selfconscious life of less
than half that period. For, to say nothing of
his sleeping by day in summer, he retires into
his hole on the approach of cold weather, and
there remains torpid until the return of spring,
'bids the earth roll, nor heeds its idle whirl. -
The ease and speed with which he digs his
hole, stern foremost, not elbowing, nor shoul-
dering, but hipptng away the earth behind
him, are quite remarkable and it is really
funny to watch him as he goes under, his
eyes, with their three sets of eyelids wink
ing rapidly as they disappear, not again for
more than six long months ''to revisit the
pale glimpses of the moon"
The toad loves the twilight. Excepting
| shady' in the daytime, he comes nimbly forth
after sunset, and seeks his evening meal among
| the insects which swarm amidst the deepening
shadows. As ''it is the early bird that catches
| the morning worm" so it is the twilight toad
| that catches the evening bug. How often, at
| eventide, have l sat on piazza or dOor-steps
and watched the activity of these bright-eyed
bug -devouTers, dozen of them in sight at
once, hopping about in the gathering gloom
like rabbits in their warren, evidently aware
| that they are licensed pets, each one ''char-
| tered libertine," safe from all enemies and
| not seriously disturbed when some Jealous
| entomologist seizes one of their number and
| gently compels him to disgorge his evening
| meal in order to discover in his NAV some rare
and delicate insect, whose nocturnal habits
| enable him to elude all eyes less keen than
| those of the toad.
was early taught to spare the lives of toads
and swallows. "If you kill them," said one OF
the village oracles, in the very beginning OF my
memory, 'the COWS will give bloody milk" |
| believed it most religiously, and doubted not
| that should thus be deprived of my morning
and evening bread and-milk should wantonly
| destroy either of those sacred animals.
1t has long been known that toads will not
only remain for more than half year in q
torpid state, as is their winter custom, but that
they will live for years shut up in darkness,
and seemingly beyond the reach of either all
or food. There are cases, we'll or i'll authenti.
Gated of the discovery of living toads inclosed
in solid trees, in coal, in various kinds o.
stone in beds of sand or gravel, at immense
depths below the earth's surface. Over g
sandstone mantel piece in Chillingham Gas
tie, England there used to hang, framed
in with a coat of arms, a Latin inscrip
tion, in letters of gold, calling attention tx
cavity in the mantel, and reciting tha
living toad was taken from that hole il
the rock when the mantel was split from
the quarry. Nearly hundred years ago. il
tearing down the wall of Partisan house be-
longing to the Due d'Orleans, which had beer
standing nearly fifty years, live toad was
|
wall, his hinder-legs imbedded in the mortar
This discovery led to many cruel expert
ments in both France and England
experiments too cruel to be justified
by any scientific pretext. Monsieur Her
risant, in presence of a committee of the
French Academy of Sciences, inclosed three
toads in plaster, boxed and sealed them up
and laid them aside for year and half. The
boxes were opened at the end of that period
and two of the toads were found alive. They
were again boxed up for a few months, and
then again their sarcophagi were opened bu
all were dead. In 1917, at Paris, DR.. Edwards
enclosed a number of toads in plaster and az
far as he could, in various ways, deprived
them of air. All of them lived many days
but those died soonest which he forced to re
main under water.
In 1926 and 1880 two English clergymen
who might have been better employed in paro
chial duty, repeated these experiments on
larger scale. The full record of the tortures
they inflicted may be found in the Edinburgh
Philosophical Journal, April-OctobeT, 1882
PIP. 26, 22S. DR.. Buckland was the first Of
these experimenters. That reverend gentle
man caught thirty-two toads, shut them up and
starved them for two months in a cucumber
frame in his garden; so that, to use his OWL
words, they "were in an unhealthy and some
what meagre state' when, on the Goth of No.
vembeT, 1925, he proceeded to imprisOn them
more closely. -Four of them he plugged tight
into as many holes, each cut about five inches
deep and three inches wide, on the north side
of the trunk of an apple tree. At the end OF q
l Uaar aUarU Ona M tbasa fO11r tOada WaS dead