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 x out your twelve 

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

 varieties, of our lacerti, of w r hich Ray enumerates five. ) 1 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 1 

 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 pungitius ; he found the 

 gasterosteus aculeatus in plenty. ^ 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 the snake tribe take the water : we nave 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 trie 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 Linnaeus,) 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 pungitius, 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. semiarmatvs, and 

 g. hiurus. See note at page 26. En. 



