NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 45 



ascertaining these ; but remember well to have seen, formerly, several 

 beautiful green lacerti on the sunny sand-banks near Farnham, in 

 Surrey ; and Ray admits there are such in Ireland.* 



LETTEE XVIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, July 27th, 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 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's 

 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 to-morrow morning. I gave some directions, in a letter, to what 

 particulars the engraver should be attentive.t 



Finding, while I was on a visit, that I was within a reasonable 

 distance of Ambresbury, I sent a servant over to that town, and 

 procured several living specimens of loaches, which he brought, safe 

 and brisk, in a glass decanter. They were taken in the gullies that 

 were cut for watering the meadows. From these fishes (which measured 

 from two to four inches in length) I took the following description : 

 " The loach, in its general aspect, has a pellucid appearance ; its back 

 is mottled with irregular collections of small black dots, not reaching 

 much below the linea lateralis, as are the back and tail fins ; a black 

 line runs from each eye down to the nose ; its belly is of a silvery- 

 white;. the upper jaw projects beyond the lower, and is surrounded 

 with six feelers, three on each side ; its pectoral fins are large, its 

 ventral much smaller; the fin behind its anus small; its dorsal-fin 

 large, containing eight spines; its tail, where it joins to the tail-fin, 

 remarkably broad, without any taperness, so as to be characteristic of 

 this genus; the tail-fin is broad, and square at the end. From the 



* In Mr. Bell's work on British Reptiles, fourteen species may be said to be 

 given. Two of these, however, are Chelonians, or tortoises, and of accidental occur- 

 rence only, so that Mr. White's difficulty is not unnatural, considering the general 

 state of information when he wrote. 



t The obliging and anxious disposition of Mr. White to forward the views and 

 studies of his correspondent are here shown, as also his own homely manner, and 

 without attributing any merit to himself of giving his opinion of such remedies 

 as curing cancers by toads. Mazel, the person to whom the specimens were 

 addressed, was Pennant's engraver, and his name also stands as the artist upon 

 some of the plates of antiquities in the original 4to edition. 



