50 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELI3ORNR. 



LETTER XVII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, June iStft, 1768, 



DEAR SIR, On Wednesday last arrived your agreeable letter of 

 June the loth. It gives me great satisfaction to find that you pursue 

 these studies still with such vigour, and are in such forwardness 

 with regard to reptiles and fishes. 



The reptiles, few as they are, I am not acquainted with, so well as 

 I could wish, with regard to their natural history. There is a degree 

 of dubiousness and obscurity attending the propagation of this class 

 of animals, something analogous to that of the cryptogamia in the 

 sexual system of plants : and the case is the same with regard to 

 some of the fishes ; as the eel, &c. 



The method in which toads procreate and bring forth seems to be 

 very much in the dark. Some authors say that they are viviparous : 

 and yet Ray classes them among his oviparous animals ; and is 

 silent with regard to the manner of their bringing forth. Perhaps 

 they may be terw \>.iv WOT-OKOI, tw de ZWOTOKOI, as is known to be the 

 case with the viper. 



The copulation of frogs (or at least the appearance of it ; for 

 Swammerdam proves that the male has no penis intrans} is 

 notorious to everybody : because we see them sticking upon each 

 others backs for a month together in the spring : and yet I never 

 saw or read of toads being observed in the same situation. It is 

 strange that the matter with regard to the venom of toads has not 

 been yet settled. That they are not noxious to some animals is 

 plain : for ducks, buzzards, owls, stone-curlews, and snakes, eat 

 them, to my knowledge, with impunity. And I well remember the 

 time, but was not eye-witness to the fact (though numbers of per- 

 sons were), when a quack, at this village, ate a toad to make the 

 country-people stare ; afterwards he drank oil.* 



* This is a letter upon reptiles, the natural history of which, as well as that of fishes, 

 White had little opportunity of studying. Toads procreate exactly in the same manner 

 as frogs, and both are oviparous, the bead-like chains which are often seen in pools in 

 spring, as if they were looped over each other, is the newly-deposited spawn of the former. 

 The venom of toads is discarded as a fable, but there is an excretion from the skin which 

 can be exuded upon irritation, and serves for protection. It causes the evcessive. 



