Merrit, I trust, is widely mistaken when he ad- 

 vances that the Rana arborea is an English reptile ; it 

 abounds in Germany and Switzerland. 



It is to be remembered that the Salainaiidra aqiia- 

 tica 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 Sala- 

 mandra 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 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 

 of misunderstanding his meaning, I shall give it in 

 his own words. Speaking of the opercula or cover- 

 ings to the gills of the Mtid ingiiana, he proceeds to 

 say that " the form of these pennated coverings ap- 

 proaches 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 

 mvself." 



Linnaeus, in his '' Systema Naturae," hints more 

 than once at what Mr. Ellis advances. 



68 



