The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1873-08-14
Toads Living without Eating.

The notion that toads can live with
out material food is both more generally
believed and better supported than that
touching the Jewel in its head. Numer-
GUS accounts, apparently we'll authenti-
Gated, relate the finding of toads en-
tombed in the centre of aged trees
when cleft open by the woodlands
wedge, or enclosed in chambers of
chalk or stone until disinterred by the
miner, but still alive, and seemingly in
good health. Their presence in such
places was accounted for, in the case of
the trees, by the supposition that they
had either climbed, or been dropped by
some bird of prey, into the hollow
trunk and, being unable to extricate
themselves, had been gradually shut in
by the growth of wood overhead. In
the case of chalk or stone, it was be-
lieved that the egg had been washed by
floods through some minute crack or
crevice into an already-existing chamber
in the mine, which egg had Matched in
due course, and produced the interest
ing recluse in question. Both of which
suggestions seem possible explanations
of the mystery.
SO persistently, indeed, have such
stories been repeated, that DIR. Buck
land, formerly Dean of Westminster,
determined to put the matter to the test
by enclosing sundrv toads in blocks of
stone and wood. For this purpose he
had twenty-four holes excavated in two
blocks of stone-twelve of them in O.
block of coarse oolitic limestone, and
twelve in a block of close-grained sill
cious sandstone. The holes were crcu-
lar-those in the limestone were twelve
inches deep by five in diameter, and
those in the sandstone were of the same
diameter, but only half the depth.
Each cell had groove at the top, fitted
to receive circular plate of glass, with
slate over it, and when closed was rem
dered impervious to air and water by a
coating of soft clay.
In each of the twenty-four cells an
unfortunate toad was placed and sealed
down on a given day, having been first
carefully weighed, and the blocks of
stone were buried in the earth three
feet deep. On opening the cells, thir-
teen months after, all the toads in the
smaller cells were found dead, and
much decayed. The greater part of
those in the oolite were still alive, and,
stranger still, more than one had actu-
ally increased in weight But in at
least one of such cases of increase the
cover of the cell was found to be slight
ly cracked-sufficiently so, perhaps, to
admit small insects out of the surround
ing earth. All the survivals were then
buried again, and at the end of the Sec
ond year they were also dead.
During the last incarceration they
were frequently watched through the
glass cover of their cells, and always
appeared to be wide awake with open
eyes, and in no state approaching tor
por but on each successive examina-
ton they were observed to be growing
/" fine by degrees and beautifully less, u
until at last they died of sheer emacia-
ton.
All those confined in trees in the
same fashion were dead at the end OF
the first year, and much decayed. The
cells were in apple trees, on the north
side of the tree, five by three inches
large.
That the toad does "live on the vapol
of dungeon appears therefore to be
conclusively disproved. And such
aerial toads seem to be as much crea
lures of the poets brain as the flower
eating serpents of the same great writer
--BelgraUid.