50 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
LET PE cow 
TO THE SAME. 
SELBORNE, Yune 18th, 1768. 
DEAR SIR,—On Wednesday last arrived your agreeable letter of 
Junethe roth. It gives me great satisfaction to find that you pursue 
these studies still with such vigour, and are in such forwardness 
with regard to reptiles and fishes. 
The reptiles, few as they are, I am not acquainted with, so well as 
I could wish, with regard to their natural history. There is a degree 
of dubiousness and obscurity attending the propagation of this class 
of animals, something analogous to that of the crypfogamia in the 
sexual system of plants: and the case is the same with regard to 
some of the fishes ; as the eel, &c. 
The method in which toads procreate and bring forth seems to be 
very much in the dark. Some authors say that they are viviparous : 
and yet Ray classes them among his oviparous animals; and is 
silent with regard to the manner of their bringing forth. Perhaps 
they may be iow pév wordco, tw de wordko, as is known to be the 
case with the viper. 
The copulation of frogs (or at least the appearance of it; for 
Swammerdam proves that the male has no fenis zntrans) is 
notorious to everybody : because we see them sticking upon each 
others backs for a month together in the spring: and yet I never 
saw or read of toads being observed in the same situation. It is 
strange that the matter with regard to the venom of toads has not 
been yet settled. That they are not noxious to some animals is 
plain: for ducks, buzzards, owls, stone-curlews, and snakes, eat 
them, to my knowledge, with impunity. And I well remember the 
time, but was not eye-witness to the fact (though numbers of per- 
sons were), when a quack, at this village, ate a toad to make the 
country-people stare ; afterwards he drank oil.* 
* This is a letter upon reptiles, the natural history of which, as well as that of fishes, 
White had little opportunity of studying. ‘Toads procreate exactly in the same manner 
as frogs, and both are oviparous, the bead-like chains which are often seen in pools in 
spring, as if they were looped over each other, is the newly-deposited spawn of the former. 
The venom of toads is discarded as a fable, but there is an excretion from the skin which 
can be exuded upon irritation, and serves for protection. It causes the excessive 
