The frog or toad in its young state, and having just entered upon its terrestrial life, is a small creature, which could, with the utmost ease, wriggle into crevices and crannies of a size which would almost preclude such apertures being noticed at all. Gaining access to a roomier crevice or nook within, and finding there a due supply of air, along with a dietary consisting chiefly of insects, the animal would grow with tolerable rapidity, and would increase to such an extent that egress through its aperture of entrance would become an impossibility. Next, let us suppose that the toleration of the toad's system to starvation and to a limited supply of air is taken into account, together with the fact that these creatures will hibernate during each winter, and thus economize, as it were, their vital activity and strength; and after the animal has thus existed for a year or two--no doubt under singularly hard conditions--let us imagine that the rock is split up by the wedge and lever of the excavator. We can then readily enough account for the apparently inexplicable story of "the toad in the rock." "There is the toad and here is the solid rock," say the gossips. "There is an animal which has singular powers of sustaining life under untoward conditions, and which, in its young state, could have gained admittance to the rock through a mere crevice," says the naturalist in reply. Doubtless, the great army of the unconvinced may still believe in the tale as told them; for the weighing of evidence and the placing _pros_ and _cons_ in fair contrast are not tasks of congenial or wonted kind in the ordinary run of life. Some people there will be who will believe in the original solid rock and its toad, despite the assertion of the geologists that the earliest fossils of toads appear in almost the last-formed rocks, and that a live toad in rocks of very ancient age--presuming, according to the popular belief, that the animal was enclosed when the rock was formed--would be as great an anomaly and wonder as the mention, as an historical fact, of an express train or the telegraph in the days of the patriarchs. In other words, the live toad which hops out of an Old Red Sandstone rock must be presumed, on the popular belief, to be older by untold ages than the oldest fossil frogs and toads. The reasonable mind, however, will ponder and consider each feature of the case, and will rather prefer to countenance a supposition based on ordinary experience, than an explanation brought ready-made from the domain of the miraculous; whilst not the least noteworthy feature of these cases is that included in the remark of Smellie, respecting the tendency of uneducated and superstitious persons to magnify what is uncommon, and in his sage conclusion that as a rule such persons in the matter of their relations "are not to be trusted."