The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1904-10-15
EATING POWER OF T0ADs.

The United States Government Bull
letin says: The toad is gross feed
er. He sallies forth usually after
sundown in search of his prey, which
includes pretty nearly every variety
of insect and worm, and experiment
proves that in twenty-four hours he
will consume insect food of volume
four-fold the capacity of his stomach
in other words, he can fill up four
times. Of angle worms he does not
seem very fond, though his glut-
tonous habits extend to them if they
are too temptingly abundant, as after
the earth has had a good wetting.
Ants appear to be his chief delight,
with cutworms and thousand -leggers
next in order. Then come caterpil-
lars and beetles. Grasshoppers and
crickets furnish but small part of
his bill of fare, and spiders still less.
He has no use, apparently, for dead
prey, but when an insect or worm
for It eagerly. A cutworm which
has discretion enough, when in his
neighborhood, to keep curled up may
escape but as soon as it begins to
crawl, let it beware. His method of
capturing a bug is to dart out his
tongue, which, by the way, reverses
the usual order of nature by being
fastened in front and loose behind.
1t is coated with a glutinous secre-
ton, and when it strikes an object is
fastened firmly to it and conveys it
into the toad's mouth. If the object,
like big worm, for instance, is too
large to go unassisted into his gullet
he uses his forepaws, like greedy
child, to stuff it down.
Most of the viands which toad
loves are, in their living state, pests
of the farm and gardens. 1t is hard
to say just where to place ants in this
classification. Nearly all students of
nature, as we'll as persons who have
nothing but the traditions of their
childhood to guide their judgment,
have acquired certaiu affection for
the ant. It's seeming intelligence, its
artistic or mechanical instinct, its un-
tiring industry, its courage, its care
for its dead and wounded, its nice
domestic economy and its habit of
providing against the 'rainy day."
ali tend to give it sort of human
claim upon us. Still, the fact con-
not be ignored that the ant is an ac-
tive distributor of plant lice, that it
destroys lawns, spoils garden walks,
infests dwellings and makes itself a
common nuisance in the kitchen and
pantry, driving the dainty housewife
almost to distraction. In the same
category with ants, as to human re-
gard, might be placed honey bees,
which the toad will eat when he gets
a good chance. One of his tricks is
to station himself at the entrance to
hive and capture the belated home
comers. As the toad does not spring
into the air for his food, however, any
apiarist may avoid this danger by
Sfodfid. Sfi5iiidd his hives well above the
Reference has been made to the
toad's consumption of. food as being
out of proportion to his bulk. But
what he can actually do at a sitting is
best told by figures derived from ex-
pertinent. His official record shows
one case where he ate ninety rosebugs
without being satisfied another where
he snapped up eighty-six housefies
in less than ten minutes. In one
toad's stomach were found seventy
seven thousand-legged worms; in an
other sixty-6ve gypsy-moth caterpil-
lars; in another ffty-fve army
worms; and so on. On the basis of
his being able to fill his stomach four
times in twenty-four hours, it requires
simple mathematical calculation to
discover how many of each variety of
winged or crawling pest a single toad
might get away with in day if he
hept at it and the conditions were fa-
vorable and multiplying this product
by ninety, as representing the days
in summer-for Mr.. Toad is no re-
specter of Sundays or holidays-we
can measure his potential capacity
for good as the gardeners friend.