46 The Natural History 



I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, 

 that some ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) 

 took a fancy to a toad, which they nourished summer 

 after summer, for many years, till he grew to a monstrous 

 size, with the maggots which turn to flesh flies. The 

 reptile used to come forth every evening from an hole 

 under the garden-steps ; and was taken up, after supper, 

 on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, ken- 

 ning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a 

 severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. 

 After this accident the creature languished for some time 

 and died. 



I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive read- 

 ing of the excellent account there is from Mr. Derham, 

 in Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creatio?i (p. 365), con- 

 cerning the migration of frogs from their breeding ponds. 

 In this account he at once subverts that foolish opinion 

 of their dropping from the clouds in rain ; showing that 

 it is from the grateful coolness and moisture of those 

 showers that they are tempted to set out on their travels, 

 which they defer till those fall. Frogs are as yet in their 

 tadpole state ; but in a few weeks, our lanes, paths, 

 fields, will swarm for a few days with myriads of these 

 emigrants, no larger than my little finger nail. Swam- 

 merdam gives a most accurate account of the method 

 and situation in which the male impregnates the spawn of 

 the female. How wonderful is the oeconomy of Providence 

 with regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile ! While it is 

 aquatic it has a fish-like tail, and no legs : as soon as the 

 legs sprout, the tail drops off as useless, and the animal 

 betakes itself to the land. 



Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances 

 that the ra?ia arborea is an English reptile ; it abounds 

 in Germany and Switzerland. 



It is to be remembered that the saiamafidra aquatica 

 of Ray (the water-newt or eft) will frequently bite at the 

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

 take it for granted that the saiamatidra aquatica was 

 hatched, lived, and died in the water. But John Ellis, 

 Esq., F.R.S. (the coralline Ellis) asserts, in a letter to 



