Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/117

 of the evidence presented, will be inclined to doubt greatly the justification for inserting the adjective "solid"; for usually no evidence whatever is forthcoming as to the state of the rock prior to its removal. No previous examination of the rock is or can be made, from the circumstance that no interest can possibly attach to its condition until its removal reveals the apparent wonder it contained, in the shape of the live toad. And we rarely, if ever, find mention of any examination of the rock being made subsequently to the discovery. Hence, a first and grave objection may be taken to the validity of the supposition that the rock was solid, and it may be fairly urged that on this supposition the whole question turns and depends. For, if the rock can not be proved to have been impermeable to and barred against the entrance of living creatures, the objector may proceed to show the possibility of the toad having gained admission, under certain notable circumstances, to its prison-house.

The frog or toad in its young state, and having just entered upon its terrestrial life, is a small creature, which could, with the utmost ease, wriggle into crevices and crannies of a size which would almost preclude such apertures being noticed at all. Gaining access to a roomier crevice or nook within, and finding there a due supply of air, along with a dietary consisting chiefly of insects, the animal would grow with tolerable rapidity, and would increase to such an extent that egress through its aperture of entrance would become an impossibility. Next, let us suppose that the toleration of the toad's system to starvation and a limited supply of air is taken into account, together with the fact that these creatures will hibernate during each winter, and thus economize, as it were, their vital activity and strength; and after the animal has thus existed for a year or two—no doubt under singularly hard conditions—let us imagine that the rock is split up by the wedge and lever of the excavator; we can then readily enough account for the apparently inexplicable story of "the toad in the rock." "There is the toad and here is the solid rock," say the gossips. "There is an animal which has singular powers of sustaining life under untoward conditions, and which, in its young state, could have gained admittance to the rock through a mere crevice," says the naturalist in reply. Doubtless, the great army of the unconvinced may still believe in the tale as told them, for the weighing of evidence and the placing pros and cons in fair contrast are not tasks of congenial or wonted kind in the ordinary run of life. Some people there will be who will believe in the original solid rock and its toad, despite the assertion of the geologist that the earliest fossils of toads appear in almost the last-formed rocks, and that a live toad in rocks of very ancient age—presuming, according to the popular belief, that the animal was inclosed when the rock was formed—would be as great an anomaly and wonder as the mention as an historical fact of an express train or the telegraph in the days of the patriarchs. The reasonable