inly a demand upon our credulity which few will be
ready to answer.

Yet, after all, it is a question that must not be decided _a priori_: it
must rest upon evidence. It may be that here, too, fact is stranger than
fiction; and we must not shut our eyes and ears to concurrent credible
testimony, if it happen to bear witness to facts which we cannot account
for. Truth will certainly be upon us, even though, ostrich-like, we
thrust our head into a bush, and maintain that we cannot see it.

The learned historian of British Reptiles speaks with his characteristic
candour upon the point. He admits that the many concurrent assertions of
credible persons, who declare themselves to have been witnesses of the
emancipation of imprisoned Toads, forbid us hastily to refuse our
assent, or at least to deny the possibility of such a circumstance;
while he demands better and more cautious evidence to authorise our
implicit faith in these asserted facts.[97]

The ordinary mode of accounting for the phenomena, supposing them to be
narrated in good faith, is that the animal "fell into the hollow where
the men were at work, and was taken up by them in ignorance of the mode
in which it had come there," or that "it may have hidden in the hollow
of a tree during the autumn and winter, and on the return of spring
found itself so far inclosed within its hiding-place as to be unable to
escape." This latter suggestion would be more worthy of attention were
the winter season the period in which, in our climate, periodical
additions are made to the living wood, so as to narrow the entrance, or
in which augmentations of bulk occurred to Toads, so as to prevent them
from getting out where they got in;--but unfortunately the reverse of
both suppositions is true. As to the former suggestion, while it may
possibly serve to dismiss a few of the published statements, there are
others which it would be absurd to explain thereby.

True to its principles of never shutting the door to the investigation
of any natural history subject, the _Zoologist_ has, during the eighteen
years of its existence, been a medium for collecting and preserving
facts bearing on this question. The pages of this periodical form an
invaluable storehouse to the philosophic naturalist, who wishes to
pursue his science undeterred by the ridicule of sciolism or the frown
of authority. Let us search its treasures, then, expecting to find
stories of diverse grades of credibility, of wh