There was held to be mortal antipathy between the toad and the spider, and the result of a meeting between them was a conflict fatal to one or both of the antagonists. The _Aster Tripolium_, a well-known English wild plant, was originally called the toad-wort. “When a spider stings a toad, and the toad is becoming vanquished, and the spider stings it thickly and frequently, and the toad cannot avenge itself, it bursts assunder,” at least, the author of the “Ortus Sanitatis” says it does, but whether this arises from venom or from vexation he does not explain. “If such a burst toad be near the toad-wort, it chews it and becomes sound again; but if it happens that the wounded toad cannot get to the plant, another toad fetches it and gives it to the wounded one.” Topsell, in his “Natural History,” vouches for this having been actually witnessed. That the skin of the toad gives forth an acrid secretion which serves the creature as a defence is established beyond doubt, but its hurtful properties have been greatly exaggerated. Dryden refers to the lady “who squeezed a toad into her husband’s wine,” the inference being she was in heart murderous. Spenser makes Envy ride upon a wolf and chew “between his cankred teeth a venomous tode,” while Diodorus declares that toads were generated by the heat of the sun from the dead bodies of ducks putrefying in mud.[111] Lily, in his “Euphues,” declares that “the foule toade hath a faire stone in his head,” an idea that Shakespeare has immortalized in the beautiful lines that remind us how:— “Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Yet wears a precious jewel in its head.”