It, however, happened that at the beginning of the nineteenth century a spirit of inquiry into the history of the crust of our earth was set going. The science of geology was eagerly pursued by many capable men, both abroad and in this country. The Geological Society of London was founded in 1809. The doctrine of the vast age of the earth and the demonstration of successive layers of deposit--forming its rocks and containing the remains of strange and of gigantic animals unlike those now existing--excited widespread interest and controversy. Buckland introduced the study of geology in Oxford. Lyell was his pupil, and became the great teacher and exponent of geological theory in a series of masterly treatises, written in such form that they appealed during half a century to educated men of all professions and occupations. The country clergy and their friends gave themselves with enthusiasm to the investigation of strata and the collection of fossils. Now came the opportunity of the toad embedded in stone!
It is not worth while inquiring who was the first to make the suggestion, but it very soon became one of the favourite assertions of the wonder-mongers who hang on to the skirts of science--not to be confused with the enthusiastic nature-lover--that the living toads found in blocks of stone, and sometimes in lumps of coal, are thousands of years old, contemporary with the geologic age of the rocks in which they are found embedded, survivors of the extinct animals whose bones and teeth the geologists had discovered and described, also embedded in such rocks! This entirely baseless fancy took root, and has flourished ever since the early Victorian period. Only a few months ago there were paragraphs in the papers on the discovery of a live toad of antediluvian age in a block of stone. Old gentlemen have repeatedly written to the newspapers, and sometimes privately to me, describing how they had, on breaking an unusually large lump of coal in the dining-room coal-scuttle, liberated from an age-long prison an antediluvian toad, which hopped out from the lump of coal in a marvellous state of health and agility. Whenever any discussion has arisen with regard to these statements, and such an explanation offered as I have given above as to the apparent enclosure of a toad in a piece of rock, or a similar explanation as to the encasement of one in the black mud adhering to lumps of coal stacked in sheds or cellars--some of the would-be believers in the immense age of the liberated toads appeal to the fact that amongst the most remarkable extinct animals whose bodies are found in ancient strata are reptiles, whilst others, more learned, insist on the well-known prevalence of the remains of animals of the class Amphibia, to which the toad belongs, in the "Coal Measures."