The wonderful foresight which instinct gives it, makes the toad select some comparatively soft earth in a protected place where it can bury itself. The earth chosen is moist, but not wet. If it were dry the toad would dry up before spring. It is not uncommon for farmers and gardeners to plough them up late in the fall or early in the spring. Also in digging cellars at about these times they are found occasionally. In burying itself the toad digs with its hind legs and body, and pushes itself backward into the hole with the front legs. The earth caves in as the animal backs into the ground, so that no sign is left on the outside. Once in far enough to escape the freezing and thawing of winter, the toad moves around till there is a little chamber slightly larger than its body; then it draws its legs up close, shuts its eyes, puts its head down between or on its hands, and goes to sleep and sleeps for five months or more. When the warm days of spring come it wakes up, crawls out of bed and begins to take interest in life again. It looks around for insects and worms, and acts as if it had had only a comfortable nap. [Illustration: _Fig. 122. The same toad awake in the spring._ (_Natural size_).] The little toad that you saw hatch from an egg into a tadpole and then turn to a toad, would hibernate for two or three winters, and by that time it would be quite a large toad. After it had grown up and had awakened from its winter sleep some spring, it would have a strong impulse to get back to the pond where it began life as an egg years before. Once there it would lay a great number of eggs, perhaps as many as a thousand or two, for a new generation of toads. And this would complete its life cycle. While the toad completes its life cycle when it returns to the water and lays eggs for a new generation, it may live many years afterward and lay eggs many times, perhaps every year. Many insects, some fish and other animals, die after laying their eggs. For such animals the completion of the life cycle ends the life-history also. But unless the toad meets with some accident it goes back to its land home after laying the eggs, and may live in the same garden or dooryard for many years, as many as eight years, and perhaps longer. (See Bulletin No. 46, Hatch Experiment Station of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Amherst, Mass.) ERRONEOUS NOTIONS ABOUT THE TOAD. If one reads in old books and listens to the fairy tales and other stories common everywhere, he will hear many wonderful things about the toad, but most of the things are wholly untrue. One of the erroneous notions is that the toad is deadly poison. Another is that it is possessed of marvelous healing virtues, and still another, that hidden away in the heads of some of the oldest ones are the priceless toad-stones, jewels of inestimable value.