Golden toad led bachelors to attack amplectant pairs and form what has been described as a "writhing masses of toad balls". During the 1977 and 1982 seasons, males outnumbered females by over 8 to 1 at breeding pools. Each toad couple produced 200–400 eggs each week for the six-week mating period, with each egg approximately 3 mm in diameter. The eggs of the golden toad, black and tan spheres, were deposited in small pools often no more than one-inch deep. Tadpoles emerged in a matter of days, but required another four or five weeks for metamorphosis. During this period, they were highly
Toad in the hole Charles Elme Francatelli's 1852 recipe mentions '6"d". or 1"s". worth of any kind of cheap meat. This recipe was described as 'English cooked-again stewed meat' ("lesso rifatto all'inglese") or 'toad in the Hole', in the first book of modern Italian cuisine, which stressed that meat was to be left-over from stews and re-cooked in batter. The dish was originally not called toad in the hole. In the 1787 book "A Provincial Glossary", for example, it was referred to as "meat boiled in a crust". The first mention of the word "hole" appeared in the 1900 publication "Notes & Queries", which