FROM THE ENTOMBED BUFO TO THE CANNED FROG : IMPOSSIBLE FOSSILS AND CONTAMINATED FRENCH BEANS
By Jean Loïc LE QUELLEC
Widely distributed is the "Entombed Toad" motif, according to which toads could stay for months, years, centuries, millenia or even more, living without air, water or food, totally enclosed in compact blocks of marble, coal, concrete, sandstone or limestone, and crouching patiently until one day a hammer stroke liberates them. According to those stories, when a miner, a quarryman, a stone cutter or an archaeologist splits the lump, the batrachian blinks at the unaccustomed daylight, and hops placidly away. Sometimes, it can only survive but some hours or days after it is released .
The oldest case is quoted in a chronicle by Robert of Thorigny (1145). A living toad was found enclosed in a stone of the ramparts, at Le Mans : from the moment it was killed, its congeners began to pullulate along the town walls as never before . In 1198, William of Newburgh refers to a similar occurrence (Historia Anglia, Book 1, ch. 28). The allusions began to increase during the sixteenth century, as in the works of Simon Majol (Dies caniculares), G. Agricola (De Animalibus subterraneis), J. Cardan (De rerum veritate), U. Aldrovandus (De reliques animalibus exanguibus) and even Ambroise Paré, who relates how a large living toad was found in a big stone, in his vineyard of Meudon, before 1575 .
This belief is still alive ; connected with the medicinal properties attributed to that animal (which is supposed to suck the corrupted wind), it explains some observances in general use in the farms, and illustrated by the following narration of a young agriculturist, collected in 1989 :
"... that man used to put a toad in a flower pot, you know. He used to place it at a stable window, to cure a disease. I don't know what kind of disease it was (...) and... well, he told me that he forgot to remove the toad, and the toad stayed for goodness knows how long, may be one year, something like that, and it was as thin as a rake, you know... but it was still alive" .
An older variant of that apotropaic practice consisted in burying the toad in a flower pot under the stable threshold to protect the cattle. The occurrences mentioning such batrachians hermetically enclosed and subsisting on soil for years are a good many .
Living toads found in solid substances (rocks, trunk of trees) were periodically recorded by erudite scholars in the "Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences" and in various scientific publications, during the seventeenth eighteenth centuries. Bob Skinner recently counted more that three hundred cases . During the nineteenth century, several scientists like A.M.C. Duméril , J.N. Vallot , or Frank and William Buckland , carried out very serious experiments to investigate that alleged phenomenon. For example, the last named, who was the first professor of Geology at Oxford University, prepared twenty four circular cells having a groove at their upper margin fitted to receive a plate of glass. Twelve were made of coarse oolithic limestone, and twelve were made in a block of compact siliceous sandstone. Dr Buckland took twenty four toads, both large and small, and placed one of each type in each of the above mentioned cells. "The large and small animals being distributed in equal proportion between the limestone and sandstone cells", before burying all the blocks under three feet of earth. Thirteen months later, the toads were examined. Every batrachian in the smaller cells was dead, "the greatest number of those in the large cells of porous limestone were alive", but there was some aperture in the cells, or cracks in the glass cover. Finally, all the animals died within two years, and the author came to the following conclusion :
"From the fatal result in the experiments (...), it seems to follow that Toads cannot live a year excluded totally from atmospheric air (...) ; it seems also probable that they cannot survive two years entirely excluded from food ; we may therefore conclude that there is a want of sufficiently minute and accurate observation in those so frequently recorded cases, where Toads are said to be found alive within blocks of stone and wood, in cavities that had no communication whatever with the external air (...). No examination is ever made until the reptile is first discovered by the breaking of the mass in which it was contained, and then it is too late to ascertain, without carefully replacing every fragment (and in no case that I have seen reported has this ever been done) whether or not there was any hole or crevice by which the animal may have entered the cavity from which it was extracted (...). The attention of the discoverer is always directed more to the Toad than to the minutiae of the state of the cavity in which it was contained."
By that statement, the scientific world learnt that toads are destined to die, and cannot survive eternally either in the stones found by miners or paleontologists or... in the canned French beans. Finally, the story told by the announcer of "Europe nû 1" demonstrates how some beliefs, corresponding to old world views, are harder to kill than any batrachian.
In 1856, a priest called Adolphe de Chesnel, in his famous "Dictionnaire des Superstitions", passed the following remarks about the latest entombed toad cases : "It is true that, in the present state of our knowledge, it is difficult to explain that irregular fact which is inconsistent with the laws laid down by the physical studies : but the Great Arbitrator of everything does not bind Himself to follow the professors'wanderings" .
Nevertheless, during the last century, a good many authors tried to solve rationally the problem of the "embedded reptiles", and it is interesting to consider their responses or explanations of the legend. For example, when the "Société Linnéenne de Paris" started in 1824 a competition around this difficult question, J.N. Vallot suggested that the term "crapaud" (toad) was used by the quarrymen and masons for a cavity in rock, and the expression "crapaud vivant" (living toad) for a geode lined with crystals. Illustrating the term "crapaud" (toad), Littré gives the meaning of : "coarse stone found in marble". For Bergen Evans, "The toad's clammy, corpselike feeling with its suggestion that it is already dead and hence no subject to mortality, may be the basis for many stories that one hears of a toad's being liberated from the centre of a block of stone or concrete in which he had obviously lived for years, or even centuries, without nourishment or air" .
More recently, M. Skinner proposed "an alternative explanation" : "There is a high rate of calcareous deposition in some limestone districts, as is demonstrated at the sites where objects suspended in dripping water become coated in a layer of stony deposition (...). A good proportion of entombed toad cases occurs in limestone areas, and this hypothesis may be valid in some of them although it has not been conclusively shown for how long such a toad could survive" . In 1985, the same author wrote that "The "toad in a hole", Sea serpent and giant Gooseberry were all classed together in the minds of some authors as the kind of stories now known as "Silly Season" tales. It is interesting to conjecture what their modern counterparts might be" .
It is noteworthy that the "entombed toads" are not regularly mentioned in the literature. Very rare in the mediaeval texts, they increased during the fifteenth sixteenth centuries, the highest rate being observed during the eighteenth and principally the nineteenth centuries. It's also during the last century that the studies, reports and experiments concerning the "impossible fossil" flourished. Later, the authors became more and more sceptic, humorous, and even frankly bantering. Obviously, it was no longer important to know if the story was true or not, for it was used by the journalists as an amusing way to fill in a space. For example, the "Glacial toad" or "Bufo compactilis" supposedly found near Frederick (Oklahoma) in "the same clay strata which has yielded relics of the Pleistocene or glacial age, of approximatively 300.000 years ago", was mentioned in the New York Times under date of April, 1rst, 1928.
For some decades, the "toad in the hole" has been ignored by the media. Since the quarrymen stopped working by hand, nobody cares about the toads well known by their predecessors (a "toad" being a real batrachian or some nodule or geode in a stone). Simultaneously, the development of geology and paleontology overthrew our Weltanschauung. Before the first third of the nineteenth century, it was still conceivable to find a living toad contemporaneous with the stone in which it was sleeping. On the one hand these animals could hibernate and fast for long periods ; on the other hand, the earth was supposed to be only created some thousand years ago. In the eighteenth century, the scholars calculated that the world was forty or sixty hundred years old, possibly seventy five according to the most audacious of them. It was only in the years 1860 1870 that a true notion of prehistoric men and civilizations was formed . As the chronologies grew longer and longer, the possibility for a toad to be entombed in a geological formation and to survive up to the present times appeared to be more and more incredible. Such a phenomenon is now as unlikely as the finding of a radio set in a solutrean layer.
On May, 24, 1989, I noticed the following news in a French newspaper:
"REIMS. A resident of St Brice Courcelles, near Reims (Marne), discovered, much to her surprise, a new way to dress the beans, finding a little frog in a can of choice french beans. The merchant gave Mrs Douce her 4,90 F back, and decided to keep the can and the frog, to have an exhibit 'for my tradesmen that, otherwise, would not believe me'"
I would have never paid great attention to this clipping if, the morning after, in the same newspaper, the following item had not come out :
"Lille. As she was opening a can of french beans for lunch, Mrs Bernadette Vandercamere, of Neuville en Ferrain, near Lille, found the head of a little snake or lizard"
During the next six months, my curiosity was sharpened, and my attention drawn by several news items of the same kind :
a) on September, 1, 1989, a housewife of Alençon (Orne) had also discovered, in a can of french beans, "a green slimy animal, obviously dead : a toad" ;
b) on November, 27, 1989, I read that a consumer of Caen "much to her surprise, had found, at noon, a toad steeping in a can of french beans" ;
c) on December, 7, 1989, a woman living near Douai (Nord) had been "surprised to find a dead toad", as she was pouring out the contents of a can of french beans .
A photograph illustrated one of these news : it was obviously a trick picture specially carried out at the columnist's request. Another one stated ironically that the mention "frog" didn't appear on the label : therefore, the animal was given as a "free extra". A photograph showed the little batrachian lying on the french beans, right in the top of the full can, of course. A third one specified that the can of french beans was in fact a "winning purchase", bought in a supermarket near Caen (but no name was quoted). The columnist finally added that the housewife intended to buy henceforth only deep frozen products, because "through the plastic bag, one can see what one is purchasing".
The unintentional humour of the "winning purchase", seems to express the resentment of some housewives against supermarkets that are not only selling you toads instead of french beans, but are also frankly mocking you.
Several news stressed the colour of the animal, a mimetic green allowing confusion with the vegetables. When the journalists mentioned "official" statements sent out by industrialists or veterinary departments, it was always in the same hackneyed phrases : "The head office emphasises the exceptional character of the incident..." ; "That kind of occurrence is very rare, as confirmed by the head of the veterinary departments...". The prevailing explanations evoked the machine made collecting of the beans. Sometimes they went further into details: "the animal crept between the prongs of the machine"... "it appears that the animal has been drawn with the vegetables", or : a toad "may exceptionally jump between the prongs of the machine." Such paragraphs became so frequent in the newspapers, that 50MC ("Cinquante Millions de Consommateurs" : Fifty Million Consumers, one of the French magazines undertaking consumer's defence) drew up a synthetical article :
"French beans with meat. Regularly, consumers assert that they discovered a toad steeping in a can of french beans. Rumour ? No, no ! That isn't to be wondered at, answer the mill owners : the collecting of the beans being machine made, a pustulous batrachian or another unwonted animal may jump between the prongs of the machine, and pass through all the filters. That is something like... not very reassuring. When are the newspapers to print that headline : a consumer of Bécon les Gruyères discovered an unwonted French bean in her can of toads? Faugh ! "
That passage was clearly published with the intention of disproving any assumption that the story could be untrue. Nevertheless, its humorous conclusion implies that the magazine didn't take the question very seriously, whereas the reader cannot help getting uneasy about this statement. The possible find of a toad in his can "shouldn't be wondered at". That statement itself is rather surprising, when juxtaposed to the term "unwonted", appearing twice in so short a text. Did the author really make serious investigations at the canned food factories ? One may have doubts about it, and in fact, the "Direction Générale de la Concurrence, Consommation et Répression des Fraudes" of the "Département de la Vendée" gave me the following details :
"One must know that two leading causes may explain the unwonted presence of small animals in the canned food. First, the machine made picking of the vegetables : the use of such a method might have provoked the involuntary capture of mice or other animals, collected with the vegetables. Then, the visual checking of the vegetables on endless belts, at the preparatory stage, is a way to eliminate those animals systematically. Only a deficient attention at that stage of the production might have caused their presence in the canned food. Secondarily, that presence might have resulted from an employee's malpractice, much more difficult to locate. Fortunately, that kind of practice is exceptional (...). As far as we are concerned, I confirm that such anomalies are very few (about once every three years in our department)".
As the article of 50MC already did, that text calls to mind the possibility of catching different animals, and not only toads. Except the head of an above mentioned lizard, the newspapers picked up no reports of mice or insects (or "other animals" : snails, slugs and the like), which are, statistically, as likely to be found in french beans as toads.
It should be also observed that only two hypotheses were put forward :
1) Deficient checking or sorting ; 2) Malpractice.
Consulted about the first one, the "Chambre Syndicale des Industries de la Conserve" stated that "the endless belts are equipped with very powerful electronic detectors eliminating the impurities abundant in the agricultural produce delivered to the canning factory, and passing on the checking chain".
More, the "Centre Technique de la Conservation des Produits Agricoles", consulted about the possibility for a batrachian to avoid the checking at the endless belt stage, wrote back :
"The operating process is well improved and bound by permanent verification, during and after the workmanship. A whole system of checking, double checking and cross checking, in the factory and outside, makes sure of the perfect wholesomeness of the products, and to verify their conformity to the norms. The French beans, in particular, are gauged by passing through sifters setting definite limits to their size (not more than a few millimetres in diameter). A frog, even at the tadpole stage, would have great difficulties in threading its way through the filters".
So, it does not seem that a little mammal or batrachian can escape the precautionary measures and sneak in the canned food. Consequently, the remaining hypothesis is the "malpractice" one, subdivided as follows :
a) Stealthy addition of a batrachian in a can before sterilization, to the detriment of the employer and of the whole industrial branch whose interests are affected. It is impossible to verify the truthfulness of a supposition that can be ultimately neglected, in consideration of the large quantities of canisters distributed by the canning factories (251700 t. of canned French beans produced in 1988, by portions of five kilograms, 850 grams, 425 grams and even less, that is to say about 300 million units per year on an average).
b) Swindling by dishonest persons complaining about false malpractices to get compensations. Mr E. Belmont, directorial attaché of the "Centre technique de la Conservation des Produits Agricoles", wrote me that he personally witnessed such unfair dealings .
The investigation shows that both of the mentioned hypotheses are proving, if not completely impossible, to be at the very least extreme cases, from a statistical point of view. In fact, we must conjure up a third one, so incredible that nobody recalled it. Yet... On November, 28, 1989, most of the quoted news were already published. Then, according to an announcer of "Europe nû 1" (one of the leading broadcasting stations) a housewife being on the point of cooking French beans in her microwave oven, discovered, much to her surprise... a toad alive in the can ! It means that the animal could have escaped all the visual selections, manual and mechanical sifting, washing, scalding, and other violent manipulations, before being put in the canister. Then it could have survived the sterilization at 120 to 130û C or even more. Under these conditions, and at first sight, there is no doubt that story is untrue because, if one considers it rationally, there are only two answers :
a) either the can is sterilized and the toad is dead ;
b) or the can is not sterilized, therefore the contents must be putrid, and the can must end by exploding.
The only remaining possibility is the following, as incredible as it may appear. Toads are immortal and/or even diabolical, or at least the operations usually following one another in the food factories are not adequate to kill them.
Now those propositions correspond exactly to an old group of beliefs and legends, echoing the diabolical symbolism of all types of "reptiles" (term traditionally including the batrachians) widely manifested by the religious iconography or by well known legends in the collections of exempla . Furthermore, many legends suggest that toads are indeed immortal, or at least extremely (unnaturally ?) resilient.
The possibility of discovering an "Entombed bufo" disappeared with the recent developments of Prehistory, Geology and Palaeontology. But something of that image still remains and, at the price of some minor changes, it has been turned into the alleged "reality" of the "toad living in a canister". The frequency of the "Canned Frog" motif in the newspapers demonstrates that the rumour phenomenon took a prominent part in the diffusion process. After the first news, on May, 24, 1989, a real epidemic broke out, and six news items were published in seven months. They all mentioned a reptile found by a woman in her canned French beans... Why, in the newspapers, are wasps never found by male consumers in their canned fruit ? I only spotted one case of "rag in the beans", although small objects (gravels, rags, screws...) are as likely to be found in the canned food as any tiny nauseating beast (in consideration of all the current safety devices). In relation to the imaginary conceptions about women, it seems that toads are symbolically "better" to be found in the canned French beans.
Mr Foubert, the columnist of Alençon who published the first case of "Toad in the French beans", wrote to me : "it is not a rumour at all, it is the reality, but amplified". What did he mean by "reality" ? How far "amplified" ? Moreover, what is the meaning of a sentence like "to amplify the reality" ? The same columnist informed me that "a few weeks before, a young man of Alençon found a rag in a can". Here could be the source to our "epidemic" phenomenon, because from a symbolical, cultural and journalistic point of view, a toad "sounds" better than a simple rag. All the cases of "Toad in the can" are localized in the same area (the two counties of Nord and Orne). Their distribution in space and time (one case per month) suggests a circulation from mouth to ear, echoed from time to time by regional gazettes before being quoted by the national newspapers or magazines.
All the variants share similar basic elements, typical of the "foreign matter in food" legend type. Suzan Domowitz described the core legend as follows : a) someone purchases packaged or canned food, or goes to a restaurant ; b) usually after having eaten the food (but sometimes before), something disgusting is found to have been in the food ; c) the foreign matter is some part (or the whole body) of a human being or an animal ; d) evidence for or against credibility of the incident.
A late sample survey (IFOP, March, 1990) about the phobias of the French shows that women suffer most frequently from these irrational fears, which concern principally reptiles. Consequently, it is not surprising to find, among the most nauseating animals, those quoted in the rumours of contaminated food ("worm" being often an euphemism for "snake") : according to widespread conceptions, batrachians are as dangerous or venomous as many snakes... Claudius Aelianus already wrote than "if a man crushes a toad and he offers the blood to another to drink after he has with malicious intent poured it into wine (...), the draught brings not a lingering but an instant death" and, during the XVIth century, Ambroise Paré still stated that toads are very venomous, and that it is necessary to wash the edible plants before eating them, because "toads and other venomous animals" use to spit their venom on them . In his famous dictionnary, Chomel (XVIIth century) specifies that toads are able to throw their venomous urine or spittle to their enemies , according to popular beliefs often noticed in France up to the present time .
It finally appears that by their colour and shape, and by the beliefs and fears they motivate, toads are symbolically predisposed to find themselves in canned French beans. From a biological point of view, frogs present a vivid plant green coloured skin and have more chance than toads to hop in a bean plantation, but everything leads us to believe that the roots of our anecdote are definitely rather psychological than technical or biological. The genealogy of our "Canned Frog Story", traced back to the "Entombed Bufo", corroborates P. Mullen's explanation : "the specific rumours mentioned by the informants are not necessarily the origin point. What is more likely is that rumours act as reinforcements for already existing legends" . That is probably why no other species than "reptiles" (i.e. : toads, frogs and lizards, according to the old meaning of the word) were ever found in the canned French beans. They were "predestinated" to become impurities squaring with what we could have supposed to be a now extinct imago mundi. Those age old sleepers have been lying for centuries in a fossilized view of the world, and all of a sudden, risen from the dead, they now hop away in our technological civilization, where nobody expected them anymore.
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