To me a Fortean thing is synonymous with some tiny English thing, some minor curiosa which can be identified and catalogued. The work of Charles Fort is a blessing to an archive mind such as mine own and my that of my friends and admirers, we being the last group of Victorians and Pre-Raphaelites in Merry England, I suppose. Fort is all about nomenclature and category and definition of extraordinary and unique things, that is things that no-one else in the world takes the slightest notice of, which keep out the mensche when you come to think ot it. Fortean culture has nothing to do with that modern political nonsense. You cannot say Fortean “politics” any more than you can say English intellectual, Irish pornography, or military intelligence.

Fort’s listing and naming activity makes one feel what shall I say – special. Yes that’s the word. That’s the way a person of quality should feel, don’t ya know. I hate anything collective. I mean who would want something that everyone else has? That would be like using a communal bath towel, surely.

Lots to do this month. The water to change in the ponds, the inmates to feed with meal or garden worms, or exciting hunts in the

dense undergrowth for missing friends. There is garden­ing to be done without stooping, a dead limb of some giant o£ the dwarf forest to be lopped, ferns which have spread too far to be pruned and trimmed.

Of all the inhabitants of my terrarium the most attractive to me are the toads, and the bigger they are the more I cherish them. Therefore I love best of all the huge giant toads which inhabit damp, cool, shady nooks in the forests of Central America, Brazil, and Trinidad.                         Our toads are named Mr. and Mrs. Watson.

Toads are found the whole world over; they inhabit all countries except Iceland, Madagascar, Australia, and the islands of the South Pacific, and are very much alike in character. Almost every toad has the same proud, supercilious expression, which gives it such an air of dignity and aloofness and discourages undue familiarity, a beast true to the most sacred English nature.

Some bounders beyond Calais however find fault with his pendulous belly which lies spread out beneath him, but to the true toad-lover this aldermanic feature only adds to his majesty. It is but in recent years that the toad has come into his own. For centuries the toad was maligned and wrongly accused of many crimes of which, with our better knowledge of his private life, we now know him to have been innocent. To-day only the most ignorant believe little Fortean myths and legends claiming that toads suck the milk of cows or turn wine into vinegar.

In the past my favourite has been accused of robbing birds' nests of their eggs, not wan­tonly like the members of the British Oologists' Association, but to eat. Many a toad in the past suffered torture and lingering death on the assumption that he possessed the evil eye or cast spells on man or beast. Nothing was too bad to believe of the toad. It was said that its spittle drove dogs mad, or that its breath was poisonous. I myself have heard a child's nurse protest when I allowed her little charge to stroke a pet toad. She screamed that this would cause warts to appear on the child's hands, a perfect little Fortean tale indeed!

But the toad of the past was not considered to be always and altogether malignant. It was well known to our forefathers that when toads were properly prepared and applied or swallowed, they formed an infallible cure for the gravel or dropsy, and would stop nose bleeding and soothe pain. I know from my own experience that a toad slipped beneath the pillow of a sufferer from typhoid fever would bring down his temperature forthwith. Fort would have loved such folklore even though some of it was cruel. It has been said for example, that if a toad was hung by one leg in a stable, the horses were safe from any fear of infection, and no rat would dare to enter. Moreover, precious stones often lay hidden in the heads of toads. To magicians, sorcerers, doctors, and wizards the toad was an unfailing ally.

A good Fortean factoid is that the earliest record of a toad being kept as a pet occurred in 1619, and ended disastrously for its owner. In the house of the French philosopher Vanini, some busybody discovered a live toad in a glass bowl, and reported this positive proof of witchcraft to parliament, which at once issued an edict condemning the philosopher to be burned alive at the stake.

Another early friend of toads was the painter John Down­man. Fort would have liked his curious pursuits. His life was full of vicissitudes. During the height of his success as a fashionable portrait-painter, he suddenly left London to retire to Town Malling in Kent. Here his chief amusement was the taming of animals. His greatest achievement in this line was to train two toads to come to his call, and then at a word of command a dove and a robin would mount on the backs of the toads and be carried about by them.

I have never achieved any success like that, nor been able to persuade our Beverley to walk down the garden path mounted by a robin. History records that his neigh­bours at Town Malling looked askance at the painter from London as an eccentric, which his method of curing a cold by walking in wet grass with naked feet did nothing to modify.

News about toads crops up in all sorts of unlikely places. Who would expect the subject of toads to be on the agenda at the deliberations of a city council? Yet readers of the Hanley Evening Standard, July 25, 1934-I like to be precise about dates-will remember a paragraph reporting the' proceedings of the Arts Sub-Committee of the Stoke on-Trent City Council. The meeting had been convened to express the thanks of the City Council for certain gifts presented to the City Art Gallery. 

Amongst the various objects of art accepted and handsomely acknowledged there were not only several engravings and a large oil­painting, but two natterjack toads, the gift of the Rev. E. A. Elliot, and a photograph of the members of the Stoke Council, given by Alderman H. Leese.

The Arts Sub-Committee of the Stoke-on-Trent City Council is to be warmly congratulated. By throwing open their doors to toads and other live animals they have gone a long way towards brightening our art galleries, and I will wager that the number of visitors to the Stoke Art Gallery has gone up by leaps and bounds.   

Altogether this action is most praiseworthy, though the honour of being the originators of this idea for the encouragement of the study of art belongs to others. The pioneers, I believe, were the trustees of the Tate Gallery, in London, who not many years ago accepted from Mr. Siegfried Sassoon a gift of two live goldfish for exhibition in the fountain in the central hall of their gallery.    

One hopes that this further step in the right direction will be emulated by the trustees of the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and other London picture galleries.

Both the history and the natural history of the toad are of absorbing interest. Quite lately a delightful book was published in Paris, “La Vie des Crapauds,” by Monsieur Jean Rostand, which is devoted entirely to the fascinating batrachian. No one intending to keep a toad should fail to procure a copy of the book, which has been translated into English under the title “Toads and Toad Life.” How fashion changes!    

The great naturalist Cuvier, whom one can scarcely imagine to have been squeamish over crawling animals, described the toad as being both “hideous and revolting,” while Gessner declared  “its glance is enough to make a man turn pale and ill.” But what a different character does the toad get from his admirer and biographer, Monsieur Rostand ! According    to this distinguished French naturalist, to the toad belongs the honour of being the first walker in the world.

Just consider the importance of that! The toad taught man to walk, and from that first lesson man has gradually progressed and improved until he has become able to travel from England to Australia in three days! Surely the discovery of walking should be cause enough for us to revere the toad, but he did more, for he was the first of all animals to have five fingers to his hands; an innovation, Monsieur Rostand sagely observes, very significant. As he points out, there is far greater difference between the fishes and the toads than there is between the toads and man.

What a humbling Fortean thought for all of usl

But I tend to become garrulous over my favourite. I am like some amorous swain who loves to talk and talk about his sweetheart, never suspecting what a bore he has become to others. But I like to think that what I have written for the Telegraph will not have been all in vain, and that I have won a few more friends for that strange reptile whose yearly life, like all Gaul, is divided into three parts, six months for sleep, one for love, and five for eating.