NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



43 



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 Eay (the 

 Avater-newt or eft) will frequently bite at the angler's bait, and is often 

 caught on his hook. 



I used to take it for ^^''^1,/z;^^:- _ -* 



granted that the Sa- 

 lamandra 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 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 approach 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." 



Linnaeus, in his " Systema Naturae," hints at what Mr. Ellis advances 

 more than once. 



Providence has been so indulgent to us as to allow of but one 

 venemous reptile of the serpent kind in these kingdoms, and that is the 

 viper. As you propose the good of mankind to be an object of your 

 publications, you will not omit to mention common salad-oil as a 

 sovereign remedy against the bite of the viper. As to the blind worm 

 (Anguis fragilis, so called because it snaps in sunder with a small blow), 

 I have found, on examination, that it is perfectly innocuous. A neigh- 

 bouring yeoman (to whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed 

 and opened a female viper about the 27th of May : he found her filled 

 with a chain of eleven eggs, about the size of those of a blackbird ; but 



WATER-NEWTS. 



