Now, again, we get the statement of a careful working naturalist, Mr Thomas Clark of Halesleigh. He cannot, indeed, give personal authority for what he records; but the confidence of such a man in his informant is an element not without its value. "March 25, 1859. In the early part of this month, two live Toads were dug out from the bottom of a bed of stiff brick clay, in the neighbourhood of Bridgewater, at the depth of fourteen feet from the surface of the ground; a third was killed by the spade before they were observed. This bed of clay rests on peat, and the Toads were found at the junction of the two beds, in a small domed cavity, about the size of the crown of a man's hat. On being exposed to the air, they uttered a squeaking cry, resembling that of a rat, but in about a minute they seemed reconciled to their new destiny, and moved freely about. They were kept in a jar for a few days, and then placed at liberty in a garden, where I suppose they are still living. The living ones were about two inches in length, but narrow in proportion, and of a rather lighter colour than Toads usually are; the one which was killed was very much larger. The clay under which they were buried had been gradually dug out from the surface since about the beginning of the year, but the last five feet of depth was not dug till the day on which they were discovered. After about two feet of the surface, the clay is very close and adhesive, and far too moist to admit of cracks being formed in it, even in the driest summers."[105] To this communication inserted in the _Zoologist_, Mr Newman added a note asking the name of any scientific man who was present at the exhumation. Mr Clark replies:--"I am unable to give such a name, further than as the intelligent foreman of the brickyard, Thomas Duddridge, (who witnessed the exhumation by one of the labourers of the yard,) may be entitled to the appellation; but no one, however high his scientific attainments, could be more careful than he was to give me correct information, or more exact in his statements; and if, after minute inquiry, I had not been fully satisfied of the correctness of his account, I should not have sought to occupy the pages of the _Zoologist_ with its recital. On shewing him the notice in the _Zoologist_, he said it was impossible for anything to be more correct; and he added, that the little cavity which the Toads occupied was quite smooth in every part, apparently by their long-continued movements,--as smooth, to use his own illustration, as the inside of a China bowl."[106]