60 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



a quack, at this village, ate a toad to make the country- people 

 stare ; afterwards he drank oil. 2 



I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, that some 

 ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy to a toad, 

 which they nourished summer after summer, for many years, till he 

 grew to a monstrous size, with the maggots which turn to flesh-flies. 

 The reptile used to come forth every evening from a hole under the 

 garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. 

 But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, 

 gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one 

 eye. After this accident the creature languished for some time 

 and died. 



I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive reading of the 

 excellent account there is from Mr. Derham, in Ray's "Wisdom of 

 God in the Creation " (p. 365), concerning the migration of frogs 

 from their breeding ponds. In this account he at once subverts 

 that foolish opinion of their dropping from the clouds in rain ; 

 showing that it is from the grateful coolness and moisture of those 

 showers that they are tempted to set out on their travels, which 

 they defer till those fall. 3 Frogs are as yet in their tadpole state ; 

 but, in a few weeks, our lanes, paths, fields, will swarm for a few 

 days with myriads of those emigrants, no larger than my little 

 finger nail. Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of the 

 method and situation in which the male impregnates the spawn of 

 the female. How wonderful is the economy of Providence with 

 regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile ! While it is an aquatic it 

 has a fish-like tail, and no legs ; as soon as the legs sprout, the 

 tail drops oif as useless, and the animal betakes itself to the 

 land ! 



Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances that the 

 Rana arborea is an English reptile ; it abounds in Germany and 

 Switzerland. 4 



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, 



