100 NATURAL HISTORY 



the angler's bait, and is often caught on his hook. I 

 used to take it for granted that the Salamandra aquatica 

 was hatched, lived, and died, in the water. But 

 John Ellis, Esq., F. R. S., (the coralline Ellis), asserts, 

 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 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. Speak- 

 ing of the opercula, or coverings to the gills, of the mud 

 inguana, he proceeds to say that " The form of these 

 pennated coverings approaches very near to what I 

 have some time ago observed 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." 



Linnaeus, in his Systema Naturae, hints at what 

 Mr. Ellis advances, more than once. 



Providence has been so indulgent to us as to allow of 

 but one venomous reptile of the serpent kind in these 

 kingdoms, and that is the viper. As you propose the 

 good of mankind to be an object of your publications, 

 you will not omit to mention common salad-oil as a 

 sovereign remedy against the bite of the viper 8 . 



8 The efficacy of oil as a remedy against the bite of the viper has pro- 

 bably been overrated. It is generally believed in those parts of the 

 country where vipers abound to be very efficacious as an external appli- 

 cation, as is also the fat of the reptile itself. The exhibition of ammonia 

 both as an external and internal remedy, is recommended probably on 

 surer grounds. I never heard of a well authenticated instance of the 

 bite of the English viper proving fatal, though I have known and seen 

 several cases in which the symptoms appeared to be extremely dangerous. 

 T. B. 



