firmed that he did see the trial thereof."

We have thus before us the actual things called toad-stones, and
believed by Shakespeare and his contemporaries to be found in the head
of the toad. How did it come about that these pretty little
button-like, drab-coloured fossil teeth were given such an erroneous
history? This question was answered by the late Rev. C. W. King,
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in his book on "Antique Gems"
(London, 1860). He says, "I am not aware if any substance of a stony
nature is ever now discovered within the head or body of the toad.
Probably the whole story originated in the name Batrachites
(frog-stone or toad-stone), given in Pliny to a gem brought from
Coptos, and so called from its resemblance to that animal in colour."
We have not, it must be noted, any specimens of the toad-stone at the
present day actually known to have been brought from Coptos. It is
quite possible that the fossil fish-tooth was substituted ages ago for
Pliny's Batrachites, and was never found at Coptos at all! Whether
that is so or not, the fact is that Pliny never said it came out of a
toad, but merely that it was of the colour of a toad.

The Pliny referred to is Pliny the Elder, the celebrated Roman
naturalist who wrote a great treatise on natural history, which we
still possess, and died in A.D. 79 whilst visiting the eruption of
Vesuvius. He says nothing of the Batrachites being found inside the
toad, nor does he mention its medicinal virtues. The name
alone--simply the name "Batrachites," the Greek for toad-stone--was
sufficient to lead the fertile imagination of the mediaeval doctors to
invent all the other particulars! It is a case precisely similar to
that of the old lady who was credited with having vomited "three black
crows." When the report was traced step by step to its source it was
found that her nurse had stated that she vomited something as black as
a crow!

The belief in the existence of a stone of magical properties in the
head of the toad is only one of the many instances of beliefs of a
closely similar kind which were accepted by Pliny (although he records
no such belief as to the toad-stone), and were passed on from his
treatise on natural history in a more or less muddled form to the
middle ages, and so to our own time by later writers. Thus Pliny
cites, as stones possessing magical properties, the "Bronte" found in
the head of the tortoise, the Cinaedia in the head of a fish of