The toad is almost unrestricted in his territorial range. He hops through the tropics and the temperate zones, and well up into the polar regions. Everywhere he is the same inoffensive, gentle, humble, useful and generally silent creature. But like his human brother he has his faults. He has a great fondness for bees. Happy is he when, brigand-like, he can stand by the highway of the bees and capture them as they return to their waxen city. Their wealth of honey he does not demand as a ransom, but swallows the little creatures themselves, alive and whole, and digests them at leisure. Bee-eating seems his only fault. Not only the hive-bee, but other insects as well, share his attention. Millions of noxious beetles and bugs are devoured, and the world is the richer by thousands of bushels of fruit and vegetables. The good he accomplishes largely outweighs the mischief he commits. So ceaselessly and swiftly he swallows his game, that a grasshopper’s legs or a sphinx’s antennæ may often be seen sticking out of his mouth, while the carcass itself is well down in his throat. French gardeners so appreciate his utility that he is brought to market and sold for a pittance to such as may need his services. [Illustration: COMMON AMERICAN TOAD. How He Manages a Difficulty.] Toads can be tamed and taught to eat from the hand. They are easily beguiled with sugar and with bread that has been soaked in milk, but, like a captious child, they eat only the middle out of the slice, and leave the crust. We once saw a toad, a noble fellow he was, who, at a certain hour of the closing day, would come from his gloomy retreat to receive at the hands of man his supper of flies, which he had been trained to catch on the throw. So unerringly would his tongue dart out at the opportune moment, that he seldom, if ever, shot wide of his mark. It is amusing to observe him when, in his greed and haste, he has attempted to swallow a huge grasshopper whose legs will not accommodate themselves to his peculiar gape of mouth. How he swallows and twists and contracts the walls of his throat, but the legs seem unmanageable. He does not give up, or endeavor to eject the half-swallowed body, but ponders the matter over and over. A look of delight beams out of his eyes, that shows he has managed the problem. Up goes to the mouth the right fore-leg, and, in less time than it takes to chronicle the event, the obstreperous insect is pushed into the stomach.