THE JEWEL IN THE TOAD'S HEAD

To what jewel or precious stone was Shakespeare alluding when he makes the exiled Duke in "As You Like It" (after praising his rough life in the forest of Arden, and declaring that adversity has its compensations), exclaim:

No doubt the unprejudiced reader supposes when he reads this passage that there is some stone or stone-like body in the head of the toad which has a special beauty, or else was believed to possess magical or medicinal properties. And it is probable that Shakespeare himself did suppose that such a stone existed. As a matter of fact there is no stone or "jewel" of any kind in the head of the common toad nor of any species of toad—common or rare. This is a simple and certain result of the careful examination of the heads of innumerable toads, and is not merely "common knowledge," but actually the last word of the scientific expert. In these days of "nature study" writers familiar with toads and frogs and kindred beasts have puzzled over Shakespeare's words, and suggested that he was really referring to the beautiful eyes of the toad, which are like gems in colour and brilliance.

This, however, is not the case. Shakespeare himself was simply making use of what was considered to be "common knowledge" in his day when he made the Duke compare adversity to the toad with a magic jewel in its head commonly known as "a toad-stone," although that "common knowledge" was really not knowledge at all, but—like an enormous mass of the accepted current statements in those times, about animals, plants and stones—was an absolutely baseless invention. Such baseless beliefs were due to the perfectly innocent but reckless habit of mankind, throughout long ages, of exaggerating and building up marvellous narrations on the one hand, and on the other hand of believing without any sufficient inquiry, and with delight and enthusiasm, such marvellous narrations set down by others. Each writer or "gossip" concerning the wonders of unexplored nature, consciously or unconsciously, added a little to the story as received by him, and so the authoritative statements as to marvels grew more and more astonishing and interesting.

It was not until the time of Shakespeare himself that another spirit began to assert itself—namely, that of asking whether a prevalent belief or tradition is actually a true statement of fact. Men proceeded to test the belief by an examination of the thing in question, and not by merely adducing the assertions of "the learned so-and-so," or of "the ingenious Mr. Dash." This spirit of inquiry actually existed in a fairly active state among the more cultivated of the ancient Greeks. Aristotle (who flourished about 350 b.c.), though he could not free himself altogether from the primitive tendency to accept the marvellous as true because it is marvellous and without regard to its probability—in fact because of its improbability—yet on the whole showed a determination to investigate, and to see things for himself, and left in his writings an immense series of first-rate original observations. He had far more of the modern scientific spirit than had the innumerable credulous writers of Western Europe who lived fifteen hundred to two thousand years after him. Even that delightful person Herodotus, who preceded Aristotle by a hundred years, occasionally took the trouble to inquire into some of the wonders he heard of on his travels, and is careful to say now and then that he does not believe what he heard. But the mediÆval-makers of "bestiaries," herbals, and treatises on stones, which were collections of every possible fancy and "old-wife's tale," about animals, plants, and minerals, mixed up with Greek and Arabic legends and the mystical, medical lore of the "Physiologus"—that Byzantine cyclopÆdia of "wisdom while you wait"—deliberately discarded all attempt to set down the truth; they simply gave that up as a bad job, and recorded every strange story, property and "application" (as they termed it) of natural objects with solemn assurance, adding a bit of their own invention to the gathered and growing mass of preposterous misunderstanding and superstition.

In the seventeenth century the opposition to this method of omnivorous credulity (which even to-day, in spite of all our "progress," flourishes among both the rich and the poor) crystallised in the purpose of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge—whose motto was, and is "Nullius in verba" (that is, "We swear by no man's words"), and whose original first rule, to be observed at its meetings, was that no one should discourse of his opinions or narrate a marvel, but that any member who wished to address the society should "bring in," that is to say, "exhibit" an experiment or an actual specimen. A new spirit, the "scientific" spirit, gave rise to and was nourished by this and similar societies of learned men. As a consequence the absurdities and the cruel and injurious beliefs in witchcraft, astrology, and baseless legend, melted away like clouds before the rising sun. In the place of the mad nightmare of fantastic ignorance, there grew up the solid body of unassailable knowledge of Nature and of man which we call "science"—a growth which made such prodigious strides in the last century that we now may truly be said to live in the presence of a new heaven and a new earth!

It was, then, a real "stone," called the toad-stone, to which Shakespeare alluded. It is mentioned in various old treatises concerning the magical and medicinal properties of gems and stones under its Latin name, "Bufonius lapis," and was also called Borax, Nosa, Crapondinus, Crapaudina, Chelonitis, and Batrachites. It was also called Grateriano and Garatronius, after a gentleman named Gratterus, who in 1473 found a very large one, reputed to have marvellous power. In 1657, in the "translation by a person of quality" of the "Thaumatographia" of a Polish physician named Jonstonus, we find written of it: "Toads produce a stone, with their own image sometimes. It hath very great force against malignant tumours that are venomous. They are used to heat it in a bag, and to lay it hot, without anything between, to the naked body, and to rub the affected place with it. They say it prevails against inchantments of witches, especially for women and children bewitched. So soon as you apply it to one bewitched it sweats many drops. In the plague it is laid to the heart to strengthen it." Another physician of the same period (see "Notes and Queries," fourth series, vol. vii, 1871, p. 540) appears to be affected by the new spirit of inquiry, for he relates the old traditions about the stone and how he tested them. He says it was reported that the stone could be cut out of the toad's head. (In the book called "Hortus Sanitatis," dated 1490, there is a picture, here reproduced [Fig. 4], of a gentleman performing this operation successfully on a gigantic toad.) Our sceptical physician, however, goes on to say that it was commonly believed that these stones are thrown out of the mouth by old toads (probably the tongue was mistaken for the stone), and that if toads are placed on a piece of red cloth they will eject their "toad-stones," but rapidly swallow them again before one can seize the precious gem! He says that when he was a boy he procured an aged toad and placed it on a red cloth in order to obtain possession of "the stone." He sat watching the toad all night, but the toad did not eject anything. "Since that time," he says, "I have always regarded as humbug ('badineries') all that they relate of the toad-stone and of its origin." He then describes the actual stone which passes as the toad-stone, or "Bufonius lapis," and says that it is also called batrachite, or brontia, or ombria. His description exactly corresponds with the "toad-stones" which are well known at the present day in collections of old rings.

I have examined twelve of these rings in the British Museum, through the kindness of Sir Charles Read, P.S.A., the Keeper of MediÆval Antiquities, and four in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Two of these are of chalcedony, with a figure of a toad roughly carved on the stone, and are of a character and origin different from the others. The others, which are the true and recognised "toad-stones" or "Bufonius lapis," are circular, slightly convex "stones," of a drab colour, with a smooth enamel-like surface. They are plate-like discs, being of thin substance and concave on the lower surface, which has an upstanding rim. I recognised them at once as the palatal teeth of a fossil fish called "Lepidotus," common in our own oolitic and wealden strata, and in rocks of that age all over the world. I give in Fig. 5 a drawing of a complete set of these teeth and of a single one detached. They were white and colourless in life, but are stained of various colours according to the nature of the rock in which they were embedded. A drab colour like that of the skin of the common toad is given to them by the iron salts present in many oolitic rocks; those found in the wealden of the Isle of Wight are black. That the "toad-stones" mounted in ancient rings are really the teeth of a fish has been already recorded by the Rev. R. H. Newell ("The Zoology of the English Poets," 1845), but he seems to be mistaken in identifying them with those of the wolf-fish (Anarrhicas). They undoubtedly are the palatal teeth of the fossil extinct ganoid fish Lepidotus.

Before leaving the queer inventions and assertions of the old writers about these fossil teeth, which they declared to be taken out of the toad's head, let me quote one delightful passage from a contemporary of Shakespeare (Lupton: "A thousand notable things of sundry sortes. Whereof some are wonderful, some strange, some pleasant, divers necessary, a great sort profitable, and many very precious," London, 1595). "You shall know," he says, "whether the Toadstone called 'crapaudina' be the right and perfect stone or not. Hold the stone before a toad, so that he may see it. And if it be a right and true stone, the toad will leap towards it and make as though he would snatch it from you; he envieth so much that a man should have that stone. This was credibly told Mizaldus for truth by one of the French King's physicians, which affirmed that he did see the trial thereof."

We have thus before us the actual things called toad-stones, and believed by Shakespeare and his contemporaries to be found in the head of the toad. How did it come about that these pretty little button-like, drab-coloured fossil teeth were given such an erroneous history? This question was answered by the late Rev. C. W. King, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in his book on "Antique Gems" (London, 1860). He says, "I am not aware if any substance of a stony nature is ever now discovered within the head or body of the toad. Probably the whole story originated in the name Batrachites (frog-stone or toad-stone), given in Pliny to a gem brought from Coptos, and so called from its resemblance to that animal in colour." We have not, it must be noted, any specimens of the toad-stone at the present day actually known to have been brought from Coptos. It is quite possible that the fossil fish-tooth was substituted ages ago for Pliny's Batrachites, and was never found at Coptos at all! Whether that is so or not, the fact is that Pliny never said it came out of a toad, but merely that it was of the colour of a toad.

The Pliny referred to is Pliny the Elder, the celebrated Roman naturalist who wrote a great treatise on natural history, which we still possess, and died in a.d. 79 whilst visiting the eruption of Vesuvius. He says nothing of the Batrachites being found inside the toad, nor does he mention its medicinal virtues. The name alone—simply the name "Batrachites," the Greek for toad-stone—was sufficient to lead the fertile imagination of the mediÆval doctors to invent all the other particulars! It is a case precisely similar to that of the old lady who was credited with having vomited "three black crows." When the report was traced step by step to its source it was found that her nurse had stated that she vomited something as black as a crow!

The belief in the existence of a stone of magical properties in the head of the toad is only one of the many instances of beliefs of a closely similar kind which were accepted by Pliny (although he records no such belief as to the toad-stone), and were passed on from his treatise on natural history in a more or less muddled form to the middle ages, and so to our own time by later writers. Thus Pliny cites, as stones possessing magical properties, the "Bronte" found in the head of the tortoise, the CinÆdia in the head of a fish of that name, the Chelonites, a grass-green stone found in a swallow's belly, the Draconites, which must be cut out of the head of a live serpent, the HyÆnia from the eye of the HyÆna, and the Saurites from the bowels of a green lizard. All these and the Echites, or viper-stone, were credited with extraordinary magical virtues, and many of the assertions of later writers about the toad-stone are clearly due to their having calmly transferred the marvellous stories about other imaginary stones to the imaginary toad-stone. The only stone in the above list which has a real existence is that in the fish's head. Fish have a pair of beautiful translucent stones in their heads—the ear-stones or otoliths—by the laminated structure of which we can now determine the age of a fish just as a tree's age is told by the annual rings of growth in the wood of its stem. The fresh-water crayfish has a very curious pair of opaque stones (concretions of carbonate and phosphate of lime) formed in its gizzard as a normal and regular thing. They are familiar to every student who dissects a crayfish, and I am told that in Germany to-day, as in old times also, the "krebstein" is regarded by the country-folk as possessed of medicinal and magical properties. I am not able, on the present occasion, to trace out the possible origin of all the stories and beliefs about stones occurring within animals. They are more numerous than those cited by Pliny; they exist in every race and every civilization and refer to a large variety of animals. Probably many of these beliefs date from prehistoric times. In the East the most celebrated of these stones, since the period of Arabic civilisation, is called a bezoar-stone, "Bezoar" is the Persian word for "antidote," and does not apply only to a stone. The true and original "bezoar-stone" of the East is a concretion found in the intestine of the Persian wild goat. Those which I have seen are usually of the size and shape of a pigeon's egg and of a fine mahogany colour, with a smooth, polished surface. The Persian goat's bezoar-stone is found, on chemical analysis, to consist of "ellagic acid," an acid allied to gallic acid, the vegetable astringent product which occurs in oak-galls used until lately in the manufacture of ink. The bezoar-stone is probably a concretion formed in the intestine from some of the undigested portions of the goat's food. Such concretions are not uncommon, and occur even in man. "Bezoar-stones" are obtained in the East from deer, antelopes, and even monkeys, as well as goats, and must have a different chemical nature in each case. Minute scrapings from these stones are used in the East as medicine, and their chemical qualities render their use not altogether absurd, though they probably have not any really valuable action. It is probable that their use had a later origin than that of the "stones" connected with magic and witchcraft. Sixteenth century writers, ever ready to invent a history when their knowledge was defective, declared the bezoar-stone to be formed by the inspissated tears of the deer or of the gazelle—the "gum" which Hamlet remarked in aged examples of the human species.

The substance called "ambergris" (grey amber), valued to-day as a perfume, is a fÆcal concretion similar to a bezoar-stone. It is formed in the intestine of the sperm-whale, and contains fragments of the hard parts of cuttle-fishes, which are the food of these whales. "Hair-balls" are formed in the intestines of various large vegetarian animals—and occasionally stony concretions of various chemical composition are formed in the urinary bladder of various animals, as well as of man. The "eagle-stone" is also a concretion to which magical properties were ascribed. I have seen a specimen, but do not know its history and origin. Glass beads found in prehistoric burial-places are called by old writers "adders' eggs," and "adder-stones," and were said (it is improbable that one should say "believed") to hatch out young adders when incubated with sufficiently silly ceremonies and observances. A celebrated "stone" of medicinal reputation in the East is the "goa-stone." This is a purely artificial product—a mass of the size and shape of a large egg, consisting of some very fine and soft powder like fullers'-earth, sweetly scented, and overlaid with gold-leaf. A very little is rubbed off, mixed with water, and swallowed, as a remedy for many diseases. The deep connection of medicine with magic throwing light on the strange application of stones and hairs, bones and skins, by imaginative mankind, in all ages and places, is exhibited in the common practice of writing with ink a sentence of the Koran (or other sacred words) on a tablet, washing off the ink and making the patient swallow the water in which the sacred phrase has been thus dissolved! How convenient it would be were it possible thus to impart knowledge, virtue, and health to suffering humanity!

A good example of one of the ways in which magical properties become attributed to natural objects is the stone known as amethyst. The ancient Indian name of this stone had the sound represented by its present name. In Greek this sound happens to mean "not intoxicated"; hence, without more ado, the ancients declared that the amethyst was a preventive of, and a cure for, drunkenness.