the road-sides, and the _dA(C)bris_ scraped into the centre of the road-beds;
the heaviest ploughs of that day being used to cut through these wayside
rocks, and often requiring as many as six or eight yoke of oxen to break
the necessary furrow. In many of these decaying slates, shists, sandstones
etc., hundreds of young toads, many of them not more than half an inch in
length, were turned out at different seasons of the year, showing that
they were produced independently of any parent batrachian, there being no
trace of a mother toad in connection with them.

The parent toads bury themselves in the gardens and ploughed fields in the
early autumn, and if they survive the severity of the winter months, may
propagate their kind the second year, and probably for several years. But
they require remarkably favorable conditions to continue their life for
any considerable number of years in open-field propagation, while under no
circumstances whatever can they make their way into these decaying rocks
in order to propagate their species. The reason why such fresh specimens
appear under these circumstances, and in the cavities of the rocks named,
is conclusively that indicated by the prophet Isaiah, in the text quoted
by us; and when Professor Agassiz was forced to admit that trout must have
made their appearance in the fresh-water streams emptying into Lake
Superior, instead of originating elsewhere, it is to be regretted, for the
sake of science, that he did not boldly enunciate the formula of life as
taught by the eagle-eyed prophet of the Bible, and not as proclaimed by
the owl-eyed professors of the London University College.

What is true of the trout in these Lake Superior streams, is true of them
almost everywhere, even right in the town of Cheshire, Conn., where we are
inditing this preface, the 10th day of October, 1883. We recently visited
the Rev. David D. Bishop, in the northeastern portion of this township,
where that cultured gentleman was constructing an artificial trout-pond.