_Frogs and Toads._--BIGLAND.
1. Frogs and toads resemble one another in figure, but custom and
prejudice have taught us to make a very different estimate of their
properties: the first is considered as perfectly harmless, while the
latter is supposed to be poisonous.
2. In this respect, the toad has been treated with great injustice: it
is a torpid, harmless animal, that passes the greatest part of the
winter in sleep.
3. Astonishing stories have been told of toads found in the center of
solid blocks of stone, and other similar situations, without the least
trace of the way by which they entered, and without any possibility of
their finding any kind of nutriment.
4. Toads, as well as frogs, are of a variety of species; and in the
tropical climates they grow to an enormous size. It is very probable
that they contribute to clear both the land and the water of many
noxious reptiles of a diminutive size, which might prove exceedingly
hurtful to man.
5. The toad, however, is one of the most inoffensive of all animals. We
have even heard that it has sometimes been successfully applied for the
cure of the cancer, the most dreadful, and one of the most fatal, of
human evils.
6. Mr. Pennant has related some interesting particulars respecting a
toad which was perfectly domesticated, and continued in the same spot
for upwards of thirty-six years.
7. It frequented the steps before the hall-door of a gentleman's house
in Devonshire; and, from receiving a regular supply of food, it became
so tame as always to crawl out of its hole in an evening, when a candle
was brought, and look up, as if expecting to be carried into the house.
8. A reptile so generally detested being taken into favor, excited the
curiosity of every visitant; and even ladies so far conquered their
natural horror and disgust as to request to see it fed. It seemed
particularly fond of flesh maggots, which were kept for it in bran.
9. When these were laid upon a table, it would follow them, and, at a
certain distance, would fix its eyes and remain motionless for a little
while, as if preparing for the stroke, which was always instantaneous.
10. It threw out its tongue to a great distance, when the insect stuck
by the glutinous matter to its lip, and was swallowed with inconceivable
quickness.
11. After living under the protection of its benefactor upwards of
thirty-six years, it was one day attacked by a tame raven, which wounded
it so severely that it died shortly afterward.
12. The erroneous opinion of toads containing and ejecting poison has
caused many cruelties to be exercised upon this harmless, and
undoubtedly useful tribe. Toads have been inhumanly treated, merely
because they are ugly; and frogs have been abused, because they are like
them.
13. But, we are to observe, that our ideas of beauty and deformity, of
which some arise from natural antipathies implanted in us for wise and
good purposes, and others from custom and caprice, are of a relative
nature, and peculiar to ourselves.
14. None of these relative distinctions, of great and small, beautiful
or ugly, exist in the all-comprising view of the Creator of the
universe: in his eyes, the toad is as pleasing an object as the
canary-bird, or the bulfinch.