60 FROGS THE WATER-NEWT. 



vances that the rana arborea is an English reptile ; 

 it abounds in Germany and Switzerland. 



It is to be remembered that the salamandra 

 aquatica of Ray, (the water-newt, or eft,) will fre- 

 quently bite at 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 mis- 

 understand his meaning, I shall give it in his 

 own words. Speaking 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 1 ." 



1 Mr. Ellis is right. The young of the triton palustris and 

 aquaticus of Fleming, salamandra exigua and platicauda of 

 Dr. Rusconi, remain in a tadpole, or comparatively imperfect, 

 state for some time after exclusion from the egg, arid undergo 

 several metamorphoses previous to arriving at maturity. Dr. 

 Rusconi says, the young of salamandra platicauda is not 

 capable to reproduce for three years. See some very interest- 

 ing information upon the transformation of these animals, in 

 a long paper published at Pavia by Mauro Rusconi, on the 

 natural history and structure of the aquatic salamander. W. J. 



