Toads themselves are well known to possess all the qualities of mind and body which go to make up the career of a successful and enduring anchorite.  At the best of times they eat seldom and sparingly, while a forty days’ fast, like Dr. Tanner’s, would seem to them but an ordinary incident in their everyday existence.  In the winter they hibernate by burying themselves in the mud, or by getting down cracks in the ground.  It is also undoubtedly true that they creep into holes wherever they can find one, and that in these holes they lie torpid for a considerable period.  On the other hand, there is every reason to believe that they cannot live for more than a certain fixed and relatively short time entirely without food or air.  Dr. Buckland tried a number of experiments upon toads in this manner—­experiments wholly unnecessary, considering the trivial nature of the point at issue—­and his conclusion was that no toad could get beyond two years without feeding or breathing.  There can be very little doubt that in this conclusion he was practically correct, and that the real fine old crusted antediluvian toad-in-a-hole is really a snare and a delusion.

That, however, does not wholly settle the question about such toads, because, even though they may not be all that their admirers claim for them, they may yet possess a very respectable antiquity of their own, and may be very far from the category of mere vulgar cheats and impostors.  Because a toad is not as old as Methuselah, it need not follow that he may not be as old as Old Parr; because he does not date back to the Flood, it need not follow that he cannot remember Queen Elizabeth.  There are some toads-in-a-hole, indeed, which, however we may account for the origin of their legend, are on the very face of it utterly incredible.  For example, there is the favourite and immensely popular toad who was extracted from a perfectly closed hole in a marble mantelpiece.  The implication of the legend clearly is that the toad was coeval with the marble.  But marble is limestone, altered in texture by pressure and heat, till it has assumed a crystalline structure.  In other words we are asked to believe that that toad lived through an amount of fiery heat sufficient to burn him up into fine powder, and yet remains to tell the tale.  Such a toad as this obviously deserves no credit.  His discoverers may have believed in him themselves, but they will hardly get other people to do so.

Still, there are a great many ways in which it is quite conceivable that toads might get into holes in rocks or trees so as to give rise to the common stories about them, and might even manage to live there for a considerable time with very small quantities of food or air.  It must be remembered that from the very nature of the conditions the hole can never be properly examined and inspected until after it has been split open and the toad has been extracted from it.  Now, if you split open a tree or a rock,