e 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_."[102]

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!"[103]

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,