Note 3 — FLASH DICTIONARY.
Reading edition
It was originally called so from the following circumstance. A gentleman passing through some part of the West of England, by accident lost his watch, and a greenhorn hearing it tick imagined it to be some live creature; so with the greatest astonishment carried it to his neighbours, who, equally amazed as himself, (for none of them had ever heard of such a thing as a watch) thought it was some reptile, and so christened it a ‘Clickman toad;’ and with a view to get a breed of young clickman toads, put it with a real toad; but after making many fruitless trials, they all assembled together and dashed its brains out for madness.