Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1869 — Toads. [ARTICLE]

Toads.

At a meeting of the N. Y.,’ Farmers' Club, Dr. J. V. C. Smith, late of Boston, read an interesting paper on the importance of farmers protecting toads from injury or destruction The following ts an extract from the document: “In consequence of the instinctive appetite of the toad for living insects, a rapid digestion and capacious membranous stomach capable of remarkable disetention, toads are incalculably useful to the gardener by protecting his under vines from the nocturnal depredators. Both toads and frogs catch their own prey with the point of their tongue. It is a marvelously constructed or* gan—occupying but little room at the eud of the gullet—appearing liEe a small fleshy eminence on prying open the jaws; it is singularly elastic, and may be projected at the pleasure of the animal, 6 and 8 inches, and perhaps more. The projectile force is exerted with the quickness of a flash of light. An extremely tenacious secretion exudes from it so sticky that the slightest touch with the object at which it is thrust holds it firmly; and the contraction of the fibres instantly delivers the struggling captive exactly at the opening of the sauces, where it is taken off, as our teeth detach a morsel from the tines of a fork.” No wonder, then, that gardeners about Paris buy toads and pay a given sum per dozen, as they do, to put in their gardens. The French people were the first to learn and proclaim the great utility of birds to both farmers and gardeners, and to advocate their protection against sportsmen who too often shoot them merely to gratify a love for what they call sport. Spare birds, toads, frogs, skunks and crows, say we, for they are all great insect feeders; and though the latter two may occasional ly do a little mischief, their co-operative service with farmers for outweighs it all Again we say, spare the vermin-destroy-ing animals. —Boston Cultivator.