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Either they get frozen to death, or else the respiration falls so low that it never picks itself up properly when spring returns. In warm climates, it is during the summer that mollusks and other mud-haunting creatures go to sleep; and when they get well plastered round with clay, they almost approach in tenacity of life the mildest recorded specimens of the toad-in-a-hole.
"Certainly not a centenarian, but perhaps a good seven-year sleeper for all that," is the final verdict which the court is disposed to return, after due consideration of all the probabilities in re the toad-in-a-hole.
This sort of thorough-going suspended animation is the kind we ought to expect from any well-constituted and proper-minded toad-in-a-hole. Such people may be said to be pro tem. functionally, though not structurally, dead. The heart has practically ceased to beat, the lungs have ceased to breathe, and physical life in the body is temporarily extinct. The fire, in short, has gone out.
There can be very little doubt that in this conclusion he was practically correct, and that the real fine old crusted antediluvian toad-in-a-hole is really a snare and a delusion.
This being an unbelieving age, then, when even the book of Deuteronomy is 'critically examined, let us see how much can really be said for and against our old friend, the toad-in-a-hole; and first let us begin with the antecedent probability, or otherwise, of any animal being able to live in a more or less torpid condition, without air or food, for any considerable period of time together.
Now, the torpid state of the mud-fish in his hardened ball of clay closely resembles the real or supposed condition of the toad-in-a-hole; but with one important exception. However, this is a mere detail; and indeed, if toads-in-a-hole do really exist at all, we must in all probability ultimately admit that they breathe to some extent, though perhaps very slightly, during their long immurement.
These are the disagreeable, prying, inquisitorial, I may even say insulting, questions with which a modern man of science is ready to assail the truthful and reputable gentlemen who venture to assert their discovery, in these degenerate days, of the ancient and unsophisticated toad-in-a-hole.
But there are other cases of encysted or immured animals which, though less striking as regards the length of time during which torpidity has been observed, are much more closely analogous to the real or mythical conditions of the toad-in-a-hole.
In short, while it would be difficult in any given case to prove to a certainty either that the particular toad-in-a-hole had or had not access to air and food, the ordinary conditions of toad life are exactly those under which the delusive appearance of venerable antiquity would be almost certain frequently to arise.
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