Daily Kennebec journal., 1904-12-26
The Toad is Voracious GourTnand.


According to Il recent bulletin issued
| by the national government, the toao Is
| q gross feeder. He sallies forth usual
| lyter sundown in search of his prey,
which includes pretty near every varle-
| ty of insect and worm, and experiment
proves that in twenty-four hours he
| will consume insect food of a volume
fourfold the capacity of his stomach
n other words he can fill up four
times OF angleworms he does not
seem vel'y fond though his gluttonous
habit extends to them if they are too
has h;ii 4 good wettinE.
Ants &ppear to BE his chief delight,
with ciItWor,:s and thousand-leggers
net% il order. Then come cateEplllefs
and beetles. GraSshOppers and crick-
cts furnish but small part of his bill
of fare. and spiders still less. He has
no use, apparantly, for dead prey; but
when an insect or worm comes near
him in motion he makes for ii eagerly.
y cutworm which has discretion
enough when in his neighborhood to
keep curled up. may easily escape. bu,
as soon as it begins to crawl let 1t be-
ware.
His method of capturing Il bug is to
dart out his tongue, which, by the way.
reverses the usual order of nature, it
being fastened in front and loose be-
hind. 1t is coated with q gelatinouS
secretion. and when it strikes an object
it fastens firmly TO it and conveys it
into the toad's mouth. If the object,
like q big worm, for instance, is too
large to go unassisted into his gullet,
he uses his forepaWs, Ike a greedy
child. to stuff it down.
Most of the viands which the toad
lovers are. III their living state, pests of
the farm and garden. 1t is hard to say
just where to place ants in this classi-
tication. 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 a
certain affection for the ant. Its SEEM
ing intelligence. its artistic or mechani-
cal instinct. its untiring industry, it's
courage its care for its dead and
wounded, its nice domestic economy
and its habit of providing against the
rainy day" all tend TO give it IL sort Of
human claim upon mankind.
J Still. the fact cannot be ignored that
the ant is an active distributor of plant
lice; that it destroys lawns. spoils gar
den walks, infests dwellings and
makes Itself common nuisance in the
kitchen and pantry. driving the dainty
housewife almost to distraction. In
the same category with ants, as to hui
man regard. might be placed the honey
bee. which the toad will eat when he
gets a good chance.
hi
at the entrance to a hive and capture
the belated homecomerS. AS the toad
does not spring into the air for his
food. however. any apiarist may avoid
this danger by raising his hives we'll
above the ground.
Reference has been made to the
toads 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 experiment.
His official record shows one case
where he ate ninety rosebugs. without
being satisfied: another where he
snapped UP eighty-six house flies in
less than ten minutes. In one toad's
stomach were found seventy-seven
thousand-legged worms; in another
siXty-five gypsy moth caterpillars; In
another fifty-live army worms, and so
on.
On the basis of his being able to fill
his stomach four times in twenty-fou
hours. 1T requires a simple mathemat1-
cal calculation to discover how many
OF the variety of winged or crawling
pest q single toad might get away with
In day. II he kept at it and the contli-
UOnS We're favorable and muJtinIyinp
lhis product by 80. as representing the
days IN a summer-for Mr. Toad is no
respector of Sundays or holidays-we
can measure his potential capacity for
good as the gardeners friend-Toledo
Blade.