5* THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 



LETTER XVII. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



ON Wednesday last arrived your agreeable letter of June the 

 10th. 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 cryptogamia 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 earn fj.lv WOTOKOI, efo> 

 Be l^tooTOKOi, as is known to be the case with the viper. That 

 of frogs is notorious to everybody : because we see them stick- 

 ing upon each other's 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 yet been 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 persons were) when a 

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

 stare ; afterwards he drank oil. 



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, with the maggots which turn to flesh flies, till he grew to a 



