NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
in 
i) 
— 
Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances that the 
Rana arborea is an English reptile ; it abounds in Germany and 
Switzerland. 
It is to be remembered that the Salamandra aquatica of Ray 
(the water-newt or eft) will frequently bite at the angler’s bait, and 
is often caught on his hook. I used to take it for granted that the 
Salamandra aquatica was hatched, lived, and died, in the water. 
But John Ellis, Esq., F.R.S. (the coralline Ellis), asserts, in a letter 
to the Royal Society, dated June the 5th, 1766, in his account of 
the mud znguana, an amphibious bipes from South Carolina, that 
the water-eft, or newt, is only the larva of the land-eft, as tadpoles 
are of frogs. Lest I should be suspected to misunderstand his 
WATER-NEWTS. 
meaning, I shall give it in his own words. Speaking of the ofer- 
cula or coverings to the gills of the sud znguana, he proceeds to 
say that, “ The form of these pennated coverings approach very 
near to what I have some time ago observed in the larva or aquatic 
state of our English /acerta, known by the name of eft, or newt ; 
which serve them for coverings to their gills, and for fins to swim 
with while in this state ; and which they lose, as well as the fins of 
their tails, when they change their state and become land animals, 
as I have observed, by keeping them alive for some time myself.”’ 
Linnzeus, in his ‘‘ Systema Nature,’’ hints at what Mr. Ellis 
advances more than once. 
Providence has been so indulgent to us as to allow of but one 
venomous reptile of the serpent kind in these kingdoms, and that is 
