60 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 



virulent cancer, she went to some church where there was a vast 

 crowd : on going into a pew, she was accosted by a strange 

 clergyman ; who, after expressing compassion for her situation, 

 told her that if she would make such an application of living toads 

 as is mentioned she would be well." Now is it likely that this 

 unknown gentleman should express so much tenderness for this 

 single sufferer, and not feel any for the many thousands that 

 daily languish under this terrible disorder ? Would he not have 

 made use of this invaluable nostrum for his own emolument ; 

 or, at least, by some means of publication or other, have found a 

 method of making it public for the good of mankind ? In short, 

 this woman (as it appears to me) having set up for a cancer- 

 doctress, finds it expedient to amuse the country with this dark 

 and mysterious relation. 



The water-eft has not, that I can discern, the least appearance 

 of any gills ; for want of which it is continually rising to the 

 surface of the water to take in fresh air. I opened a big-bellied 

 one indeed, and found it full of spawn. Not that this circum- 

 stance at all invalidates the assertion that they are larvae ; for 

 the larvae of insects are full of eggs, which they exclude the in- 

 stant they enter their last state. The water-eft is continually 

 climbing over the brims of the vessel within which we keep it 

 in water, and wandering away ; and people every summer see 

 numbers crawling out of the pools where they are hatched, 

 up the dry banks. There are varieties of them, differing in 

 colour ; and some have fins up their tail and back, and some 

 have not. 



SELBOBNE, July 27, 1768. 



