68 NATURAL HISTORY 



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 appear- 

 ance 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 

 circumstance at all invalidates the assertion that they are 

 larvce: for the larvce of insects are full of eggs, which they 

 exclude the instant 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. 



LETTER XIX. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Aug. 17, 1768. 

 DEAR SIR, 



I HAVE now, past dispute, made out three distinct species of 

 the willow-wrens (motacillce trochili) which constantly and 

 invariably use distinct notes. But, at the same time, I am 

 obliged to confess that I know nothing of your willow-lark. 7 

 In my letter of April the 18th, I told you peremptorily that I 

 knew your willow-lark, but had not seen it then : but, when I 

 came to procure it, it proved, in all respects, a very motacilla 

 trochilus ; only that it is a size larger than the two other, and 

 the yellow-green of the whole upper part of the body is more 

 vivid, and the belly of a clearer white. I have specimens of 

 the three sorts now lying before me ; and can discern that 

 y Brit. Zool. edit. 1776, octavo, p. 381. 



