OF SELBORNE. 105 



application of living toads as is mentioned she would 

 be well." Now is it likely that this unknown gentle- 

 man 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 publi- 

 cation 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-doc- 

 tress, 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 conti- 

 nually rising to the surface of the water to take in fresh 

 air 3 . I opened a big-bellied one indeed, and found it 

 full of spawn. Not that this circumstance at all in- 

 validates the assertion that they are larvce: for the 

 larva 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 4 . 



3 I have kept several of these creatures in a jar of water ; but it is 

 painful to observe their constant efforts to take breath by rising every two 

 or three minutes to the surface, so that breathing seems to be the only 

 business of their lives, requiring infinitely more labour than most other 

 animals undergo to procure food. It is clearly impossible for them ever 

 to sleep except upon land. Those which I kept cast off the whole of the 

 scarf skin (epidermis) every two or three weeks, but never the true skin 

 as serpents do. They also laid eggs enveloped in a gelatinous substance, 

 somewhat like frog spawn. RENNIE. 



4 The appearance of fin-like expansions on the back and tail of the 

 several species of Triton is confined to the male, and to the season of 

 breeding ; when their presence is obviously advantageous to animals of 

 habits altogether different from those of frogs and toads. T. B. 



