"Last
Wednesday, Feb. 7, 1849, on severing the branch of a tree, apparently of
the tamarind species, I found a Toad in the centre of the wood, entirely
excluded from light and air. The appearance of the animal was rather
extraordinary. The body seemed full of air, and the skin soft and puffy,
and of a light yellowish colour, with the exception of the extremities
of the feet, which were hard and dark. The creature when exposed to the
air seemed rather uncomfortable, and drew in its head just like a turtle
when alarmed. It was thrown into a tank, when the water around, to the
space of about a foot on either side, became perfectly white, like milk.
It jumped out of the water immediately, apparently not liking the
coldness. I did not have opportunity of observing it further, which I
regret, as the animal got concealed in the long grass on the side of the
tank, and was thus lost. The general supposition as to the mode by which
animals get inclosed within trees, is their taking shelter in the cavity
of a tree when very young, and the growth of the tree filling up the
cavity, and thus imprisoning the animal. But this supposition, if true
in the present case, makes the circumstance now related the more
extraordinary. The tree is an old one, upwards of fifty feet high, and
having a trunk more than three feet in diameter; and the height from the
ground at which the Toad was found was about twelve feet. We must
suppose the Toad to have got into the tree when within a foot from the
ground: how many years old then must the animal be?"

The mention of the whitening of the water in which the Toad was immersed
is to my mind a strong corroboration of the veracity of the preceding
narrative. It is not a circumstance at all likely to occur to a mere
inventor, as it does not in the least bear on the question of
incarceration, and there is no attempt to explain it. I have
occasionally seen fluids rendered partially opaque by the outflow of a
milky secretion from animals immersed in them, as in the case of the
curious _Peripatus_ of Jamaica, which, when put alive into spirits,
discharges a considerable quantity of white fluid, which diffuses in the
alcohol. The Toad was probably distinct from our common English species,
but we know that the latter secretes a yellow acrid fluid in some
abundance in the follicles of its skin, and this might be poured out
under the excitement of alarm or anger.

In the summer of 1851, the Academie des Sciences