68 THE WATER-NEWT. 



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. 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 off as useless, and the animal betakes 

 itself to the land ! 



Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he ad- 

 vances that the rana arborea is an English reptile : it 

 abounds in Germany and Switzerland. 



It is to be remembered that the salamandra aqua- 

 tica 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 sala- 

 mandra 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 inguana, 



