This circumstance, perhaps, may detract from the value of the example; nevertheless, it is unaccountable how the animal could have got into the position in which it was found: it is not conceivable, I think, that it should have been there ever since the first formation of the rock, and there certainly appeared to be no means by which it could have entered the rock in its present state, even admitting (what we know to be the fact) that Toads have the power of getting in and out of a very small orifice." The author of the next account, signed "E. Peacock," is unknown to me; and it does not appear whether he speaks from personal observation or not. He says, "A few days ago, two labourers, employed at a stone quarry at Frodingham, near Brigg, Lincolnshire, found, at a depth of five feet below the surface of the ground, and between two blocks of stone (lias), a living Toad: the interstice between the stones was filled with yellow clay, and there did not appear the least possible aperture by which anything could have passed."[99] Even from remote India we have reports of the same phenomenon. A correspondent from Serampore sends the _Zoologist_ the following:--"Last Wednesday, Feb. 7, 1849, on severing the branch of a tree, apparently of the tamarind species, I found a Toad in the centre of the wood, entirely excluded from light and air. The appearance of the animal was rather extraordinary. The body seemed full of air, and the skin soft and puffy, and of a light yellowish colour, with the exception of the extremities of the feet, which were hard and dark. The creature when exposed to the air seemed rather uncomfortable, and drew in its head just like a turtle when alarmed. It was thrown into a tank, when the water around, to the space of about a foot on either side, became perfectly white, like milk. It jumped out of the water immediately, apparently not liking the coldness. I did not have opportunity of observing it further, which I regret, as the animal got concealed in the long grass on the side of the tank, and was thus lost. The general supposition as to the mode by which animals get inclosed within trees, is their taking shelter in the cavity of a tree when very young, and the growth of the tree filling up the cavity, and thus imprisoning the animal. But this supposition, if true in the present case, makes the circumstance now related the more extraordinary. The tree is an old one, upwards of fifty feet high, and having a trunk more than three feet in diameter; and the height from the ground at which the Toad was found was about twelve feet. We must suppose the Toad to have got into the tree when within a foot from the ground: how many years old then must the animal be?"