WATER NEWT. 45 



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 those 

 emigrants, no larger than my little finger nail. Swammerdam 

 gives a most accurate account of the method and situation in 

 which the male impregnates the spawn of the female. How 

 wonderful is the economy of Providence with regard to the 

 limbs of so vile a reptile ! While it is an 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 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 frequently 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 

 oth, 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 misunderstand 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 laccrta, 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 



two recent instances, to prove that our author is wrong. A shower of 

 young herrings fell in Kinross-shire, about ten years ago, many of which 

 were picked up, in the fields around Loch Leven, by persons with whom 

 I am acquainted. The reason why frogs go abroad during showers, is 

 thus accounted for by Dr Townson, founded on certain experiments 

 which he instituted regarding them. He says, " That frogs take in 

 their supply of liquid through the skin alone, all the aqueous fluids 

 which they imbibe being absorbed by the skin, and all they reject being 

 transpired through it. One frog, in an hour and a half, absorbed nearly 

 its own weight of water." ED. 



* It has never been verified that the tree-frog is a native of Britain. 

 But Mr Don discovered the edible frog, rana esculenta, in the neighbour- 

 hood of lakes in Forfarshire. This species is principally distinguished 

 from the common one, by its larger size, and having three longitudinal 

 yellow lines on its back. ED. 



