is communication inserted in the _Zoologist_, Mr Newman added a
note asking the name of any scientific man who was present at the
exhumation. Mr Clark replies:--"I am unable to give such a name, further
than as the intelligent foreman of the brickyard, Thomas Duddridge, (who
witnessed the exhumation by one of the labourers of the yard,) may be
entitled to the appellation; but no one, however high his scientific
attainments, could be more careful than he was to give me correct
information, or more exact in his statements; and if, after minute
inquiry, I had not been fully satisfied of the correctness of his
account, I should not have sought to occupy the pages of the _Zoologist_
with its recital. On shewing him the notice in the _Zoologist_, he said
it was impossible for anything to be more correct; and he added, that
the little cavity which the Toads occupied was quite smooth in every
part, apparently by their long-continued movements,--as smooth, to use
his own illustration, as the inside of a China bowl."[106]

Numerous experiments have been made with a view to test the possibility
of these reputed facts. If Toads do so commonly become voluntarily or
accidentally immured, and remain without light, food, or even air, for
many years, and yet survive, let us put some Toads into similar
circumstances, keep them shut up, and, after the lapse of a sufficient
interval, examine them, and see whether they are alive or dead.
"_Experimentum faciemus in corpore vili_," as the village doctor said to
his assistant over the sick traveller.

_Probatum est!_ Besides the case mentioned in Mr Bartlett's letter
(_ante_, p. 149), the late Dr Buckland, in November 1825, instituted a
series of careful experiments, which are thus narrated by himself:--"In
one large block of coarse oolitic limestone, twelve circular cells were
prepared, each about one foot deep and five inches in diameter, and
having a groove or shoulder at its upper margin fitted to receive a
circular plate of glass, and a circular slate to protect the glass: the
margin of this double cover was closed round and rendered impenetrable
to air and water by a luting of soft clay. Twelve smaller cells, each
six inches deep and five inches in diameter, were made in another block
of compact siliceous sandstone, viz., the Pennant Grit of the coal
formation near Bristol; these cells also were covered with similar
plates of glass and slate, cemented at the edge by clay. The object of