OF SELBORNE. 63 



method and situation in which the male impregnates the 

 spawn of the female. How wonderful is the ceconomy of 

 Providence with regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile! 

 While it is 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 I 



M<'rret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances that 

 the rana arlorea is an English reptile; it abounds in Ger- 

 many and Switzerland*. 



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, in a letter to the Royal Society, dated June the 

 5th, 1766, in his account of the mud inguana, an amphibious 

 bipes from South Carolina, that the water-eft, or newt, is only 

 the larva of the land-eft, as tadpoles are of frogs. Lest I 

 should be suspected to misunderstand his meaning, I shall 

 give it in his own words. Speaking of the opercula or cover- 

 ings to the gills of the mud inguana, he proceeds to say that 

 " The forms of these pennated coverings approach very near 

 " to what I have some time ago observed in the larva or aqua- 

 " tic state of our English lacerta, known by the name of eft, or 

 " newt ; which serve them for coverings to their gills, and for 

 " fins to swim with while in this state ; and which they lose, 

 " as well as the fins of their tails, when they change their state, 

 " and become land animals, as I have observed, by keeping them " 

 " alive for some time myself." 



Linnams, in his Systema Natures, hints at what Mr. Ellis 

 advances more than once. 



* [< Ranunculus viridis seu Dryopetes." Merrett, ' Pinax,' p. 169. There 

 is, of course, no ground for the statement that the JLyla viridis is a native 

 of this country. It is difficult to understand how Gilbert White could 

 entertain a repugnance to a little creature so harmless and beautiful, and 

 so interesting in its habits. As the Hyla lives on trees, and does not fre- 

 quent the water except for breeding, it changes its skin in the same man- 

 ner as the toad. This I have ascertained. T. B.] 



