82 The Natural History of Selborne 



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 appear- 

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

 the surface of the water to take in fresh air. 1 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. 2 



1 White is quite right as to the newt in its developed adult state : but 

 in its larval form, Ellis was correct in saying that it possesses gills. ED. 

 2 The male newts develop an ornamental jagged crest or membrane up 

 the tail and back in the breeding season only, doubtless as an attraction to 

 add to their beauty. ED. 



