50 NATURAL HISTORY 



In breeding-time snipes play over the moors, piping and 

 humming : they always hum as they are descending. Is not 

 their hum ventriloquous like that of the turkey? Some sus- 

 pect it is made by their wings. 



This morning I saw the golden-crowned wren, whose crown 

 glitters like burnished gold. It often hangs like a titmouse, 

 with it's back downwards. 



Yours, &c. &c. 



LETTER XVII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, June 18, 1768. 



DEAR SIR. 



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 forward- 

 ness 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 as regards some of the fishes ; as the 

 eel, &c. * 



* [The whole of the typical Batrachia, the frogs, toads, newts, sala- 

 manders, &c., undergo a complete metamorphosis. In the land species (of 

 which we have no representative in this country), as from their habits 

 they cannot have constant access to water, the aquatic portion of their 

 existence, during which the gills remain attached, cannot be passed in 

 that medium in the same manner as the frogs &c. This essential process, 

 therefore, takes place in the oviduct, before they are excluded from the 

 mother and come forth in the perfect condition. But in the other 

 forms, to which our native species all belong, the change takes place 

 in the water, and the young live there for a time in a fish-like state as 

 regards not only their respiration but most of the other functions of life. 

 The common water-newt, or eft, exhibits a beautiful example of this 

 interesting change, retaining its pretty reddish leaf-like gills till the 

 animals are an inch or more in length. T. B.] 



