“The toad is harmless, but that is not enough to entitle it to our consideration. It is also a very useful helper, a devourer of beetles, slugs, larvæ—vermin of every description, in short. After spending the day under a cool stone or in some dark hole, it leaves its retreat at nightfall to make its rounds, [[286]]hunching itself along on its big belly. Here is a slug making such haste as it can toward the lettuce bed, there a cricket chirping at the mouth of its hole, and there again a June-bug laying its eggs in the ground. Very softly the toad approaches and in three mouthfuls gobbles them all up with a gurgle of satisfaction. Ah, those tasted good! And now for some more.
“It continues on its way, and by the time it has finished its rounds, at daybreak, you may imagine what a multitude of worms and other small prey the glutton has stowed away in its capacious stomach. And yet this useful creature is stoned to death because it is ugly! My children, never commit any such act of cruelty, at once foolish and harmful; do not stone the toad, for you would thereby deprive the fields and gardens of a vigilant guardian. Let it go its way in peace and it will destroy so many insects that you will in the end find it less ugly than you had thought.
“So well known is the toad’s usefulness that in England the animal is an article of commerce. Toads are bought in the market at so much a head, carried home carefully so as not to come to any harm, and then allowed the freedom of the garden or placed in a hothouse, a crystal palace, perhaps, where wonderful plants are grown. The toad’s business is to lie in wait for beetles, slugs, and other destroyers that might nibble the valuable plants; and it does its duty with zeal. What a change of fortune for the maligned creature when it finds itself living in a [[287]]warm atmosphere and surrounded by the most splendid flowers procured at great expense from all parts of the world and now exhaling the most fragrant odors! As a finishing touch to the honor done the poor thing in its floral palace of glass, there is offered the tribute of poetry, that flower of the human imagination and invention. Listen to this.
“A wretched toad with head split open and one eye gouged out by some cruel hand was painfully dragging itself along through the mud of a public highway, when four small boys chanced to spy it as they were passing.
“They spied the toad,
And one and all sent up a gleeful shout:
‘Come on, come on, let’s kill the ugly lout!
But first we’ll have some fun.’ They laughed their fill,
As boys will laugh, hard-hearted, when they kill.
They pricked and goaded with a pointed stick,