Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1873 — Value of Toads in the Garden. [ARTICLE]

Value of Toads in the Garden.

We encourage the harmless toads to linger about our cabbage and other vegetables as they devour every insqct that comes within'their reach. Toads thus far this season have kept our squashes and cabbage plants as free from all insects as the plants can be kept. Instead of being hateful and repulsive animals, toads are the most innocent creatures that ever ate indiscriminately anything that, had life that they could swallow. They are worth more per head to the horticulturist than chickens, even allowing that chickens did not scratch. Dr. Harris reports an interesting experiment with a toad in its efforts to swallow squash bugs, which .emit an odor..exceedingly offensive. Dr. Harris supposed the odor of the squasli bug (coreu* tristis) would protect it. from the toad: and to lest the matter he offered one ’ to a gravelooking Zwfo under a cabbage. He seized Tresgefly, but spit it out instantly, reared up on his hind legs and put his front feet on top of his head for an instant, as if in pain, and then disappeared across the garden in a series of the greatest leaps a toad ever made. Perhaps the bug bit the biter. Not satisfied with this, Dr. Harris hunted up another, toad, which lived under the piazza amLalwßys stinnedHiririself in one place in the grass, and offered him a squash bug, which lie took and swallowed, winking in' a veiy satisfied manner. Twenty other fine bugs followed the first in a few moments, with no difficulty or hesitation in the taking or the swallowing, though from the wriggling and contortions if appeared their coiners did not set well within. The stock of bugs being then exhausted a colony of smooth black larva* was found on a white birch, each about threequarters of an inch long, and over one hundred of these were fed to the waiting toad. Touching one of them with the end of a straw, it would coil around it, and then when shaken before the toad he would seize and swallow it, at first eagerly, but with diminished zest as the number increased, until it became necessary to rub the worm against his lips for some time before he could decide about it. He would then take it and sit with his lips ajar for a short time, gathering strength and resolution, and then swallow by a desperate effort. There is_.no tellingwhat the number-or result would havebeen, as the dinner-bell rung as the 101st disappeared, and by the close of the meal he had retired to his hole, nor did he appear soy four days in his sunning place.— Nem York Herald. '