NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 43 



LETTER XVII 



SELBORNE, June iSt/i, 1768. 



DEAR SIR, On Wednesday last arrived your agreeable 

 letter of June loth. It gives me great satisfaction to find 

 that you pursue these studies still with such vigor, 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 propa- 

 gation 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, etc. 1 



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 eo&> pev WOTO/COI, efo) Be 

 ZCOOTOKOI, as is known to be the case with the viper. 



The copulation of frogs (or at least the appearance of it ; 

 for Swammerdam proves that the male has no penis intrans) 

 is notorious to everybody : because we see them sticking 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 been yet 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. 2 



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, till he grew to a monstrous size, with the mag- 

 gots which turn to flesh-flies. The reptile used to come forth 

 every evening from a hole under the garden-steps ; and was 



