The pimples of various size that diversify his skin are not mere ornament, though they help materially to produce the clod-resemblance. They are glands that on occasion pour out an acrid and offensive fluid that often saves the Toad when he is caught up in the jaws of some unsophisticated carnivorous beast or bird. Experience teaches such enemies to leave the Toad alone. The largest of these glands—the parotid—may be seen as an elongated, porous swelling behind the eye. The underside is whitish, the white being qualified always with an admixture of yellow, brown, or red, sometimes spotted with black.
In the matter of size: taking the head and body for length, average males measure about two and a half inches and females an inch longer. Occasionally we may meet with much larger examples, and we may safely set down such monsters as females. The male has no vocal sacs, internal or external, as in the Frogs; but both sexes can croak with several variations of tone. These sounds are emitted much more freely in the pairing season. The male develops special grasping pads on the palm and three inner fingers, at the pairing time.
After the breeding season Toads wander away from the water, and distribute their forces over field, hedgerow, wood, and gardens, wherever there is an abundance of insect life, for the quantity of food each Toad consumes is enormous. It includes beetles, caterpillars, flies, snails, worms, woodlice, and small mice. If the droppings of a Toad be examined, they will be found to consist very largely of the indigestible parts of beetles. The Toad spends the hotter part of the day concealed under the lower foliage of plants, and as many nocturnal insects seek similar situations in the daytime, he has no difficulty in enjoying a continual feast. His appetite appears to be always keen, no matter how well he has fed. Some years ago, when we were pointing to a portly female in her favourite daytime "form" in the garden, a friend expressed the opinion that she was overfed, and we remarked that you cannot overfeed a Toad. Our friend was sceptical, and undertook to provide more food than she could eat. There followed a hunt for the fattest caterpillars and the longest worms, and the Toad accepted them as readily as though she were breaking a fast. The caterpillar hunter grew tired of the business whilst the Toad was still quite fresh, and he admitted that with so elastic an integument there was no knowing what was the limit of a Toad's feeding capacity.
The Toad has the homing faculty well developed. By the judicious wriggling of his hind quarters he scoops out a hollow in the soil, preferably under a root or stone, so that he can lie without being conspicuous. In the evening he sets out hunting, and may travel some distance; but before morning he is back snugly in his form, where he may be found during the day for many months. A similar sense of locality—"orientation" the naturalists call it—is manifested in the choice of ponds for breeding. Any chance pool, however temporary in character, will serve the Frog, but the Toad is more particular and has special requirements for a nursery. Any one who has observed our batrachians during a series of years must have noticed that scores of Toads may be seen in early spring, all converging upon a particular pond, perhaps passing some other piece of water that looks quite suitable for their purpose. In a garden where we kept a portion wild as cover for many of the smaller animals, we had a considerable number of Frogs and Toads that had come there voluntarily. A small pond was freely visited by them, together with Newts, an occasional snake and stray aquatic birds. The Frogs and Newts bred there every year; the Toads never. In a field two or three hundred yards beyond our boundary was a large deep pond that had formerly been a brickmaker's pit, but the suitable earth being exhausted it had been allowed to fill with water. To this pond Toads came in the spring from all quarters. On a mild moist evening when the great impulse took possession of the Toads, we used to see scores of them hopping across a well-used road that divided the grasslands, and next morning would see the lifeless bodies of many that had been flattened out by motor-wheels in the dark. On the further side of the pond the continuity of the grassland was again broken by a railway line, and here you would see them hopping across the track and climbing over the rails, many, of course, meeting fate in the adventure.
In our present neighbourhood there is a large pond fed by springs from the plateau gravels of an extensive common. In the days of our boyhood there was open grassland and copse between the common and the pond with only an ordinary hedge to mark that it was private land. At the present time the pond forms a fine piece of ornamental water in a private garden, and on all sides residental roads surround it. Yet this pond must have been a Toads' breeding place in the old days, for in the spring we find Toads on the tarred sidewalks of the roads seeking for gaps in the fence through which they may reach the desired trysting place; and we have sometimes put them in the way of finding it. It is very probable that in such cases the Toads are making their way back to the identical pond in which they first saw the light—a corollary to the case of the migrant birds that find their way back to build their nests in the copse or hedgerow where they were hatched.
The small, black eggs of the Toad differ from those of the Frogs in the fact that they form a double row embedded in a gelatinous string ten to fifteen feet in length. Like those of the Frog the eggs by imbibing water swell to three times their original size. The strings are wound about the stems of water-weeds by the movements of their parents, and the little black larvæ are hatched out in about a fortnight. For the first few days they cling to the egg-strings, then hang tails downwards from the under sides of leaves. They go through similar stages to those of the Frog tadpole, and become small tailless Toads, a little more than half an inch long, in eleven or twelve weeks. It is five years before they reach maturity; but the full period of life is not known. In old age they frequently succumb to the attacks of flesh-eating flies whose eggs are deposited on the back of the Toad, and the small maggots entering by eye or nostril devour the brain and eyes.
The Common Toad is found all over England, Wales, and Scotland; but Ireland appears never to have had it, in spite of the legend that St. Patrick banished it with the Snakes. It occurs all over Europe, through Siberia, the Amoor, and the Himalayas to China; also on the further side of the Mediterranean, in Morocco, and Algeria.
Natterjack (Bufo calamita, Laurent).
Although in general appearance the Natterjack may be said to resemble the Common Toad, a close inspection reveals differences that at once distinguish it as a separate species. It is smaller than the common species and its legs are not only actually but also proportionately shorter. But the narrow yellow line that runs along the centre of the head and back is the most distinctive mark, and has suggested one of its local names—Golden-back. Running Toad is the name by which it is known in the Fens, and this is a good descriptive name, for owing to the shortness of the hind limbs the Natterjack does not hop. It runs for a short distance, then stops for a little, and runs on again.