54 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



serts, 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 



Tadpoles. 



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 coverings to 

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

 form of these pennated coverings approach very near to what 

 I have some time ago ob served in the larva or aquatic 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."f 



the R. temporaria" (the common kind) " is probable from the circumstance of Dr. Stark's having 

 observed osteological differences between them and the species just alluded to. But," he con- 

 tinues, " I think it remains to be shown that they are really the R. esculenta-" The edible frog is 

 larger than the common species, of an olive-green colour, spotted with black. It has three lon- 

 gitudinal streaks of yellow down the back ; under parts yellowish. ED. 



* These curious creatures, very commonly known when upon land by the term eft, and in the 

 water by that of newt,} do not permanently reside in either element, as I shall presently show. 

 They constitute the modern genus triton, and are not to be confounded with the saurian, or lizard 

 tribe, which in shape they resemble, but from which they essentially differ. They are not rep- 

 tilet, as that appellation is now judiciously limited (all of which produce upon land, and are more 

 or less covered with scales), but pertain to the newly-established equivalent sub-class amphibia, 

 propagating by spawn, which is vivified subsequently to its extrusion, and which (at least in our 

 native species) is deposited near the surface on aquatic herbage, in long catenated strings. They 

 belong to the family salamandrida:, which, together with the ranida; (comprising the frogs and 

 toads), is arranged in the first order, or primary division of the sub-class caducibranchia, or those 

 with deciduous gills, that exist for a certain period in a tadpole or larva state, and cast several suc- 

 cessive skins before assuming the adult appearance, breathing duringthe first stage of their exist- 

 ence by means of gills, and afterwards by lungs. It is stated that they do not propagate till the 

 third year. They are harmless, inoffensive animals, as indeed are all the members of this sub-class ; 

 and, although some of them may not, perhaps, come exactly up to our notions of beauty and 

 seemliness, there is nothing in them to merit our disgust, nor to excite our hatred and abhor- 

 rence, nought whatever to extenuate the senseless persecution with which they are too generally 

 Assailed by the vulgar. Neither these nor a single member of the lizard tribe are at all venom. 

 t By many the term eft is applied to the T- palustris, and newt to the T. punctatut* ED. 



