62 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



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 un- 

 known 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 appearance 

 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 circum- 

 stance at all invalidates the assertion that they are larvae: 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 T. PENNANT, ESQ. 



DEAR SIR, Selborne, August 17, 1768. 



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

 willow-wrens (motacillce) 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, f In my letter of April 

 the 1 8th, I had told you peremptorily that I knew your willow- 

 lark, but had not seen it then : but, when I came to procure it, 



* It will be seeu, by reference to the note to p. 54, that Mr. White here confounds the finned 

 state of the adult newts with the larva, a mistake in which he is very far from being singular. 

 ED. 



t Brit. Zool. edit. 1776, octavo, p. ^81. Note. The sedge-reedling (salicar'ui phragmitis) is the 

 bird here intended. ED. 



