Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/372

 40 Journal of American Folk-Lore.

was at times a beautiful maiden resting under a curse, only to be released by marriage. At other times in the forbidding shape of this animal some good and powerful fairy would do deeds of love, or again Satan would transfer his foul spirit therein, to lay a spell on people, and do them other evil. However bad a name this devil's host has been given, there are some who appreciate his good quali- ties, for the people of Jersey and of various parts of France believe that the toad absorbs the poisonous gases from the air. 1 The live body, the different parts of the body, the secretions and various "oils " from this amphibian constitute items in folk-medicine. 2 In Japan 3 the oil of toads is considered a poison. Pliny 4 says that " authors quite vie with one another in relating marvellous stories about these poisonous animals ; such, for instance, as that if they are brought into the midst of a concourse of people, silence will instantly prevail ; as also that by throwing into boiling water a small bone that is found in their right side, the vessel will immediately cool, and the water refuse to boil again until the bone has been removed." So the toad has been feared and despised, and used as a synonym of contempt ; or on the other hand venerated, and the killing of it considered wicked and unlucky.

In Mexico it is believed that if a toad jumps on one's stomach it so chills the person that he dies, and if a toad spits on people it poisons them. With regard to the toad's venom Gilbert White said " that it is a strange matter that the venom of toads has not been settled. That they are not noxious to some animals is plain, for ducks, buzzards, owls, stone curlews, and snakes eat them with im- punity." In 1825 Dr. John Davy affirmed and tried to prove before the Royal Society that the toad is venomous. Even at the present time it is a current superstition that this animal is poisonous, either through its saliva or its urine. While neither of these secretions is harmful, yet the toad, in common with other Amphibia, secretes from cutaneous glands a milk-white, mucilaginous, foul-smelling fluid of a toxic nature. Injected subcutaneously into an animal, this secre- tion, like strychnine, affects the nerve centres, causing convulsions, and when applied to the surface of a tender skin it may produce erysipelas. 5 Although innoxous to members of its own species, it is fatal to closely related forms. The poison from a toad kills the frog, and vice versa. In the toad these toxic glands are particularly aggre- gated along the neck to form the parotoids, and they are also found

1 Rolland, Faune Populaire de la France, tome iii. p. 51, Paris, 1881.

2 In Gilbert White's time the toad was a specific for cancer. 8 L. c. 4 A T atnral History, book xxxii. chap. 18.

6 Wiedersheim Lehrb. d. Vergleich Anat. d. Wirblethiere, p. 25, Jena, 1886; Packard, Zoology, p. 475, New York, 1883.

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