The star. (Reynoldsville, Pa.) 1892-1946, 1905-03-08
THE GREEDY TOAD.
tnts, Cutworms and HOneybees Are
n FavOrite Diet.

u fhNorAAe IiCis
The toad is Il gross feeder. He sallies
forth usually after sundown in search
of his prey, which includes pretty near
every variety of insect and worm, and
experiment proves that in twenty-iour
hours he will consume insect food of
volume fourfold the capacity of his
stomach-in other words, he can fill up
four times. OF angleworms he does not
seem very fond, though his gluttonous
habit extends to them if they are too
temptlngly abundant, as after the
earth has had good wetting.
Ants appear to be his chief delight,
with cutWorms and thousand leggers
next in order. Then come caterpillars
and beetles. Grasshoppers and crlciets
furnish but a 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 comes near him in
motion he makes for it eagerly A cut
worm which has discretion enough
when IN his neighborhood to keep curl
ed up may easily escape, but as soon
as it begins to travel let 1t beware.
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 a gelatinous Sc
cretion, and when it Strikes an object it
t, ~ aud II into
the toad's mouth. If the object, like
big worm, for instance, is too large to
go unasssted into his gullet, he uses
his forepaws, like a greedy child, to
stuff 1t down.
Most of the viands which the tond
loves are in their living state pests Of
the farm and garden 1t IS hard to say
Just where to place ants in this classih
cation Nearly all students of nature
as well as persons who have nothing
but the traditions of their childhood to
guide their Judgment have acquired a
certain affection for the ant. It's SEEM
ing intelligence, its artistic or mechan-
ical instinct, its untiring industry, its
courage, its care for its dead and
wounded, its nice domestic economy
and it's habit of providing against the
"rainy day" all tend to give it sort Of
human claim upon mankind.
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 kltch-
en- and pantry, driving the housewife
almost to distraction. In the same cat
eRory with ants as to human regard
might be placed the honeybee, which
the toad will eat when he gets good
chance.
One of his tricks Is to station himself
at the entrance to a 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 raising his hives well
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 sitting Is best
told by figures derived from expert
ment. His official record shows one
case where he ate ninety rose bugs
without being satisfied; another where
he snapped up eight house flies in less
than ten minutes. In one toad's stom-
ach were found seventy-seven thou
sand-legged worms, in another sixty
five gypsy moth caterpillars, in anoth-
er fifty-five army worms, and so on.
On the basis Of his being able to ill
his stomach four times in twenty-four
hours, it requires simple mathemat-
ical calculation to discover how many
of each variety of winged or crawling
pest a single toad might get away
with in day if he kept at it and the
conditions were favorable, and, multi
plying this product by ninety, as repre-
senting the days in summer-for Mr.
Toad is no respecter of Sundays or hol-
idays-we can measure his potential ca
pacity for good as the gardeners
friend.