REPTILES. 47 



to sport in the water, perhaps with a view to procure frogs, 

 and other food. * 



I cannot well guess how you are to make out your twelve 

 species of reptiles, unless it be by the various species, or rather 

 varieties, of our lacerti, of which Ray enumerates five. ) I have 

 not had opportunity of ascertaining these, but remember well 

 to have seen, formerly, several beautiful green lacerti on the 

 sunny sandbanks near Farnham, in Surrey ; and Ray admits 

 there are such in Ireland. 



LETTER XVIII. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SELBORNE, July 27, 1768. 



DEAR SIR, I received your obliging and communicative 

 letter of June the 28th, while I was on a visit at a gentleman's 

 house, where I had neither books to turn to, nor leisure to sit 

 down, to return you an answer to many queries, which I 

 wanted to resolve in the best manner that I am able. 



A person, by my order, has searched our brooks, but could 

 find no such fish as the gasterosteus pungititu ; he found the 

 gasterosteus aculeatus in plenty. J This morning, in a basket, I 

 packed a little earthen pot full of wet moss, and in it some 

 sticklebacks, male and female, the females big with spawn ; 

 some lamperns ; some bull-heads ; but I could procure no 

 minnows. This basket will be in Fleet Street by eight this 

 evening ; so I hope Mazel will have them fresh and fair 



* The whole of tlie snake tribe take the water : we have numerous 

 records of this fact. They swim with much ease, and in America fre- 

 quently cross the great rivers. The natives say they catch fish. Mr Murray 

 mentions a curious instance of an adder having seized the artificial fly of 

 an individual fishing in one of the lakes of Scotland, on the verge of the 

 estuary of a river. It was finally drowned by dragging it into the current 

 against the stream. 



On the 2d August, 1828, a fisherman caught a specimen of the ringed- 

 snake, (coluber natrix of Linnseus,) while fishing in Haslar Lake, one 

 of the branches of Portsmouth Harbour ; and, on the following morning, 

 a seaman caught another at the same place, both of which were brought to 

 Mr Slight, surgeon, Portsmouth. ED. 



f There have been just twelve species of reptiles discovered in Britain 

 up to the present time. ED. 



| The gasterosteus pungiti us, or ten-spined stickleback, is very common 

 in our rivers and in estuaries ; few British species have been ascertained. 

 Besides the above two, there are the g. trachurus, g. semiarmatus, and 

 g. leiurus. See note at page 26. ED. 



