Part 17

"During the summer of 1846," writes Mr Hussey, "in the formation of a railroad, about half a mile from Pontefract, in Yorkshire, the works were carried a 'depth of four feet through a rock betwixt lime and sandstone, about the junction of the two formations:' the rock being so firm as to require blasting. 'It is entirely free from beds of any kind, or what the workmen term "backs," running up it,' but therein are 'an infinite number of small nodules of a harder quality, entirely crystallised in the interior.' After blasting, the labourers were much surprised to find among the fragments several of these nodules, each one containing a Frog, as many as seven having been counted after one 'shot.'

"These were not casually seen when exposed, and then disregarded, but were examined in their stone prisons through very minute holes, some even preserved in that state for a long period. For example, the relator states of one specimen, 'I kept this Toad in a cellar for about five months, during which time it ate nothing, and was without light, the hole in the stone being covered with a piece of clay, and the whole kept moist and cool with water.' Of another he says, 'The Frog lived only about a week, as I kept it in a place which I think was too warm for it, and also not sufficiently dark and quiet. When the Frogs were disturbed by the shots, their first desire seemed to be to get under shelter of some stone, or into their old holes again, shewing thereby that sight was not wanting, and bodily activity was perfect as far as could be seen. One thing struck me as singular with regard to the Frog I kept--its fresh, plump, and healthy appearance, its skin being soft and transparent. One day, when I was holding my finger over the hole in the stone, it pushed its head between my finger and the sides of the hole, and drew its whole body after it on to the table, where it appeared more like a skeleton than any living animal I have ever seen, but by degrees it extended itself to its former dimensions.'

"Of the above curious occurrence my only knowledge is derived from the account written to a distant friend, of which the substance has now been extracted. The writer is an utter stranger, but he was officially employed in the operations which resulted in the discoveries; and my information leads me to believe his report deserving of confidence, for which reason I have not hesitated to offer this abstract for publication in the Zoologist."

The Rev. Alfred Charles Smith, an excellent and genial naturalist, favours us with another case, introducing it incidentally in illustration of the general habit he is denouncing of wantonly destroying animal life:--"As an instance of this thoughtless cruelty, I must give an account that has just come to my notice. Some labourers were pulling down an old wall, in the thickness of which they found one of those phenomena--so frequently heard of and so unsatisfactorily accounted for--a Toad completely imbedded in stone and mortar. 'There was no doubt,' said the labourer who described it, 'that he had been there for a great number of years, for there was no hole or chink by which he could have entered or left the place of his long sojourn.' 'Well,' said the listener to his account, 'but are you sure that the Toad was alive when you found it?' 'No doubt of that, sir,' said the man, 'for he crawled out of his round hole and was moving away, when I knocked him on the head with my pickaxe.'

"So here was this poor harmless creature, whose long incarceration in his gloomy dungeon might have excited compassion in his favour, suddenly released from his prison, only to be slain by his liberator!"

The next is from the Caledonian Mercury. Newspaper zoology is proverbially untrustworthy, and the editor of the Zoologist, who reprints the paragraph, kindly adds a caveat for the benefit of his readers,--"Nimium ne crede Mercurio!" But, nevertheless, let us look at it: alone it would stand for little, but, remember, in such questions as this the evidence is cumulative. "There is at present to be seen at Messrs Sanderson and Sons, George Street, Edinburgh, an extraordinary specimen of natural history--a Frog which had been discovered alive in freestone rock. A few months ago, while some colliers in the employ of Mr James Nasmyth (lessee of Dundonald Colliery, in Fife, the property of R. B. Wardlaw Ramsay, Esq. of Whitehill), were engaged in taking out the pavement of the seam coal, which was freestone, they discovered a cavity in which a Frog was lying. On touching it the Frog jumped about for some time, and a bucket of water being procured, it was put into it, and taken to the surface. On reaching it, the animal was found to be dead. It was at the depth of forty-five fathoms, or ninety yards from the surface, in a perpendicular line of strata, consisting of alternate layers of coal and freestone, with ironstone, and about four hundred yards from the outcrop surface. The Frog seems to have much of the same character as the present species. It is very attenuated, which cannot be wondered at, considering its domicile for so many ages, its original existence being of course considered contemporaneous with the formation of the freestone rock in which it was contained."

Now, again, we get the statement of a careful working naturalist, Mr Thomas Clark of Halesleigh. He cannot, indeed, give personal authority for what he records; but the confidence of such a man in his informant is an element not without its value. "March 25, 1859. In the early part of this month, two live Toads were dug out from the bottom of a bed of stiff brick clay, in the neighbourhood of Bridgewater, at the depth of fourteen feet from the surface of the ground; a third was killed by the spade before they were observed. This bed of clay rests on peat, and the Toads were found at the junction of the two beds, in a small domed cavity, about the size of the crown of a man's hat. On being exposed to the air, they uttered a squeaking cry, resembling that of a rat, but in about a minute they seemed reconciled to their new destiny, and moved freely about. They were kept in a jar for a few days, and then placed at liberty in a garden, where I suppose they are still living. The living ones were about two inches in length, but narrow in proportion, and of a rather lighter colour than Toads usually are; the one which was killed was very much larger. The clay under which they were buried had been gradually dug out from the surface since about the beginning of the year, but the last five feet of depth was not dug till the day on which they were discovered. After about two feet of the surface, the clay is very close and adhesive, and far too moist to admit of cracks being formed in it, even in the driest summers."

To this communication inserted in the Zoologist, Mr Newman added a note asking the name of any scientific man who was present at the exhumation. Mr Clark replies:--"I am unable to give such a name, further than as the intelligent foreman of the brickyard, Thomas Duddridge, (who witnessed the exhumation by one of the labourers of the yard,) may be entitled to the appellation; but no one, however high his scientific attainments, could be more careful than he was to give me correct information, or more exact in his statements; and if, after minute inquiry, I had not been fully satisfied of the correctness of his account, I should not have sought to occupy the pages of the Zoologist with its recital. On shewing him the notice in the Zoologist, he said it was impossible for anything to be more correct; and he added, that the little cavity which the Toads occupied was quite smooth in every part, apparently by their long-continued movements,--as smooth, to use his own illustration, as the inside of a China bowl."

Numerous experiments have been made with a view to test the possibility of these reputed facts. If Toads do so commonly become voluntarily or accidentally immured, and remain without light, food, or even air, for many years, and yet survive, let us put some Toads into similar circumstances, keep them shut up, and, after the lapse of a sufficient interval, examine them, and see whether they are alive or dead. "Experimentum faciemus in corpore vili," as the village doctor said to his assistant over the sick traveller.

Probatum est! Besides the case mentioned in Mr Bartlett's letter (ante, p. 149), the late Dr Buckland, in November 1825, instituted a series of careful experiments, which are thus narrated by himself:--"In one large block of coarse oolitic limestone, twelve circular cells were prepared, each about one foot deep and five inches in diameter, and having a groove or shoulder at its upper margin fitted to receive a circular plate of glass, and a circular slate to protect the glass: the margin of this double cover was closed round and rendered impenetrable to air and water by a luting of soft clay. Twelve smaller cells, each six inches deep and five inches in diameter, were made in another block of compact siliceous sandstone, viz., the Pennant Grit of the coal formation near Bristol; these cells also were covered with similar plates of glass and slate, cemented at the edge by clay. The object of the glass covers was to allow the animals to be inspected, without disturbing the clay so as to admit external air or insects into the cell. The limestone is so porous that it is easily permeable by water, and probably also by air; the sandstone is very compact.

"On the 26th of November 1825, one live Toad was placed in each of the above-mentioned twenty-four cells, and the double cover of glass and slate placed over each of them, and cemented down by the luting of clay. The weight of each Toad in grains was ascertained and noted by Dr Daubeny and Mr Dillwyn at the time of their being placed in the cells; that of the smallest was 115 grains, and of the largest 1185 grains. The large and small animals were distributed in equal proportion between the limestone and sandstone cells.

"These blocks of stone were buried together in my garden beneath three feet of earth, and remained unopened until the 10th of December 1826, on which day they were examined. Every Toad in the smaller cells of the compact sandstone was dead, and the bodies of most of them so much decayed that they must have been dead some months. The greater number of those in the larger cells of porous limestone were alive. No. 1, whose weight when immured was 924 grains, now weighed only 698 grains. No. 5, whose weight when immured was 1185 grains, now weighed 1265 grains. The glass cover over this cell was slightly cracked, so that minute insects might have entered: none, however, were discovered in this cell; but in another cell whose glass was broken, and the animal within it dead, there was a large assemblage of minute insects; and a similar assemblage also on the outside of the glass of a third cell. In cell No. 9, a Toad which when put in weighed 988 grains, had increased to 1116 grains, and the glass cover over it was entire; but as the luting of the cell within which this Toad had increased in weight was not particularly examined, it is probable there was some aperture in it by which small insects found admission. No. 11 had decreased from 936 grains to 652 grains.

"When they were first examined in December 1826, not only were all the small Toads dead, but the larger ones appeared much emaciated, with the two exceptions above mentioned; we have already stated that these probably owed their increased weight to the insects which had found access to the cells, and become their food.

"The death of every individual of every size in the smaller cells of compact sandstone, appears to have resulted from a deficiency in the supply of air, in consequence of the smallness of the cells, and the impermeable nature of the stone; the larger volume of air originally inclosed in the cells of the limestone, and the porous nature of the stone itself, (permeable as it is slowly by water, and probably by air,) seem to have favoured the duration of life to the animals inclosed in them without food.

"It should be noticed that there is a defect in these experiments, arising from the treatment of the twenty-four Toads before they were inclosed in the blocks of stone. They were shut up and buried on the 26th of November, but the greater number of them had been caught more than two months before that time, and had been imprisoned all together in a cucumber frame placed on common garden earth, where the supply of food to so many individuals was probably scanty, and their confinement unnatural, so that they were in an unhealthy and somewhat meagre state at the time of their imprisonment. We can therefore scarcely argue with certainty from the death of all these individuals within two years, as to the duration of life which might have been maintained had they retired spontaneously, and fallen into the torpor of their natural hibernation in good bodily condition.

"The results of our experiments amount to this: all the Toads, both large and small, inclosed in sandstone, and the small Toads in the limestone also, were dead at the end of thirteen months. Before the expiration of the second year all the large ones also were dead; these were examined several times during the second year through the glass covers of the cells, but without removing them to admit air; they appeared always awake, with their eyes open, and never in a state of torpor, their meagreness increasing at each interval in which they were examined, until at length they were found dead; those two also which had gained an accession of weight at the end of the first year, and were then carefully closed up again, were emaciated and dead before the expiration of the second year.

"At the same time that these Toads were inclosed in stone, four other Toads of middling size were inclosed in three holes, cut for this purpose on the north side of the trunk of an apple-tree; two being placed in the largest cell, and each of the others in a single cell. The cells were nearly circular, about five inches deep and three inches in diameter; they were carefully closed up with a plug of wood, so as to exclude access of insects, and apparently were air-tight; when examined at the end of a year, every one of the Toads was dead, and their bodies were decayed.

"From the fatal result of the experiments made in the small cells cut in the apple-tree and the block of compact sandstone, it seems to follow that Toads cannot live a year excluded totally from atmospheric air; and, from the experiments in the larger cells within the block of oolitic limestone, it seems also probable that they cannot survive two years entirely excluded from food; we may therefore conclude that there is a want of sufficiently minute and accurate observation in those so frequently recorded cases, where Toads are said to be found alive within blocks of stone and wood, in cavities that had no communication whatever with the external air. The fact of my two Toads having increased in weight at the end of the year, notwithstanding the care that was taken to inclose them perfectly by a luting of clay, shews how very small an aperture will admit of insects sufficient to maintain life. In the cell No. 5, where the glass was slightly cracked, the communication though small was obvious, but in the cell No. 9, where the glass cover remained entire, and where it appears certain, from the increased weight of the inclosed animal, that insects must have found admission, we have an example of these minute animals finding their way into a cell to which great care had been taken to prevent any possibility of access.

"Admitting, then, that Toads are occasionally found in cavities of wood and stone with which there is no communication sufficiently large to allow the ingress and egress of the animal inclosed in them, we may, I think, find a solution of such phenomena in the habits of these reptiles, and of the insects which form their food. The first effort of the young Toad, as soon as it has left its tadpole state and emerged from the water, is to seek shelter in holes and crevices of rocks and trees. An individual which, when young, may have thus entered a cavity by some very narrow aperture, would find abundance of food by catching insects, which, like itself, seek shelter within such cavities; and may soon have increased so much in bulk as to render it impossible to get out again through the narrow aperture at which it entered. A small hole of this kind is very likely to be overlooked by common workmen, who are the only people whose operations on stone and wood disclose cavities in the interior of such substances.

"In the case of Toads, Snakes, and Lizards, that occasionally issue from stones that are broken in a quarry, or in sinking wells, and sometimes even from strata of coal at the bottom of a coal-mine, the evidence is never perfect to shew that the reptiles were entirely inclosed in solid rock. No examination is ever made until the reptile is first discovered by the breaking of the mass in which it was contained, and then it is too late to ascertain, without carefully replacing every fragment, (and in no case that I have seen reported has this ever been done,) whether or not there was any hole or crevice by which the animal may have entered the cavity from which it was extracted. Without previous examination it is almost impossible to prove that there was no such communication. In the case of rocks near the surface of the earth, and in stone quarries, reptiles find ready admission to holes and fissures. We have a notorious example of this kind in the Lizard found in a chalk-pit, and brought alive to the late Dr Clark. In the case also of wells and coal-pits, a reptile that had fallen down the well or shaft, and survived its fall, would seek its natural retreat in the first hole or crevice it could find, and the miner dislodging it from this cavity, to which his previous attention had not been called, might in ignorance conclude that the animal was coeval with the stone from which he had extracted it.

"It remains only to consider the case (of which I know not any authenticated example) of Toads that have been said to be found in cavities within blocks of limestone, to which, on careful examination, no access whatever could be discovered, and where the animal was absolutely and entirely closed up with stone. Should any such case ever have existed, it is probable that the communication between this cavity and the external surface had been closed up by stalactitic incrustation, after the animal had become too large to make its escape. A similar explanation may be offered of the much more probable case of a live Toad being entirely surrounded with solid wood. In each case, the animal would have continued to increase in bulk so long as the smallest aperture remained by which air and insects could find admission; it would probably become torpid as soon as this aperture was entirely closed by the accumulation of stalactite or the growth of wood. But it still remains to be ascertained how long this state of torpor may continue under total exclusion from food and from external air: and, although the experiments above recorded shew that life did not extend two years in the case of any one of the individuals which formed the subjects of them, yet, for reasons which have been specified, they are not decisive to shew that a state of torpor, or suspended animation, may not be endured for a much longer time by Toads that are healthy and well fed up to the moment when they are finally cut off from food, and from all direct access of atmospheric air.

"The common experiment of burying a Toad in a flower-pot covered with a tile, is of no value unless the cover be carefully luted to the pot, and the hole at the bottom of the pot also closed, so as to exclude all possible access of air, earthworms, and insects. I have heard of two or three experiments of this kind, in which these precautions have not been taken, and in which at the end of a year the Toads have been found alive and well.

"Besides the Toads inclosed in wood and stone, four others were placed each in a small basin of plaster of Paris, four inches deep and five inches in diameter, having a cover of the same material carefully luted round with clay; these were buried at the same time and in the same place with the blocks of stone, and on being examined at the same time with them in December 1826, two of the Toads were dead, the other two alive, but much emaciated. We can only collect from this experiment, that a thin plate of plaster of Paris is permeable to air in a sufficient degree to maintain the life of a Toad for thirteen months.

"In the 19th Vol., No. I, p. 167, of Sillimans American Journal of Science and Arts, David Thomas, Esq. has published some observations on Frogs and Toads in stone and solid earth, enumerating several authentic and well-attested cases. These, however, amount to no more than a repetition of the facts so often stated and admitted to be true, viz., that torpid reptiles occur in cavities of stone, and at the depth of many feet in soil and earth; but they state not anything to disprove the possibility of a small aperture, by which these cavities may have had communication with the external surface, and insects have been admitted.

"The attention of the discoverer is always directed more to the Toad than to the minutiæ of the state of the cavity in which it was contained."

The importance of these experiments, the care with which they were instituted, the deserved reputation of the experimenter, and the philosophic character of his inferences, will, I trust, apologise for the extent of this quotation. I do not think, however, that the question is settled by them; and I will venture to make one or two comments on the facts and on the observations.

Dr Buckland allows that the circumstances of the incarceration of his Toads were not natural. This seems to me an element of more importance than he attributes to it. They were shut up while in active life, after having been confined for two months on scanty food;--"So that they were in an unhealthy and somewhat meagre state at the time of their imprisonment." We do not know what conditions, what natural provisions precede torpidity and are essential to it; but possibly there are some, which in these cases were compulsorily precluded by human interference. It is stated that the animals that survived to the second year were always found awake when examined,--"never in a state of torpor." But Toads that had hid themselves would have been torpid during the winter months; and thus we have a sufficient proof that a natural condition of body had been by some means prevented. The experiment would be much more fair to the Toad, and much more conclusive to me, if the animal were inclosed during the depth of its winter-sleep, care being taken to handle it as little as possible.

As it was, however, most of the Toads inclosed in the limestone survived upwards of thirteen months. This surely is a very remarkable fact. Take the case of No. 9. Here was a Toad, nearly full grown, which had been shut up in a stone cell, covered with a plate of glass carefully luted down all round, so as to exclude air, buried under three feet of earth, so as to exclude the smallest gleam of light; yet, at the expiration of thirteen months, the cell being examined in winter, when normally all Toads ought to be sound asleep, this Toad was wide awake, not in the least emaciated, but so thriving in its strange dungeon as actually to have made 128 grains of flesh! to have actually increased in weight at the rate of 12-1/2 per cent.!