Toad

tod, a genus of cold-blooded animals closely allied to the frog. The life history of the toad is like that of the frog. It advances from egg to tadpole, with all its changes, to a toad. It has toothless gums, squat body, warty skin, and tongue of lightning speed. The hind toes are more or less webbed. The tree toad of Borneo has immense webbed feet, by means of which it is able to sail on a down course like a flying squirrel. Like frogs, toads sleep during the winter and spawn in the spring. They visit ponds for this purpose. The female deposits several thousand eggs. The spawn is deposited in long strings. The young toads are hopping about on dry land in about fourteen weeks. They are likely to come out of the water in great numbers during a shower. No doubt this is the explanation of the popular notion that showers of toads fall. The male toad of Surinam lifts the spawn and places it on the back of the female. Here it remains in curious honeycomb cells until the young toads are ready to hop away for themselves. The young toad is much smaller than the young frog.

The common toad is said by gardeners to be invaluable for its assistance in destroying insects. In this respect a toad is worth dozens of birds, and it lays no claim to a share of the fruit. Though repulsive in appearance, toads are the most harmless of animals. Certain pores about the eyes have the power of secreting and ejecting an acrid fluid that renders the toad less acceptable to frog-eating animals. The toad is the type of ugliness. A notion that handling toads will produce warts is as unfounded as many of the notions of what will remove them. Shakespeare expresses the popular idea of this creature: