Country Life
OXFORD TOADS.
This is a true story of the recent colonization of North Oxford with a batrachian population. A lady with a charming Eden, in which the only snake was a plague of slugs, wrote to a friendly farmer and asked him whether he would kindly supply her with a toad or two. He responded generously, and sent forty. They bred and mustered ; and soon began to overflow the one garden. Not infrequently you met toads in the street. One resident was observed descending from a bicycle and pocketing a toad that was progressing with the usual aldermanic walk across the road. To-day the gardens of North Oxford are freer from slugs than the golden gardens of the Hesperides. On the other hand one citizen who has migrated to a more central house finds the garden entirely slug-ridden and is appealing for help to recent neigh- bours in the more paradisal north, which is, indeed, a sort of animal sanctuary. *
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