OF SELBORNE 55 



I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive read- 

 ing of the excellent account there is from Mr. Derham, 

 in Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation (p. 365), con- 

 cerning the migration of frogs from their breeding ponds. 

 In this account he at once subverts that foolish opinion 

 of their dropping from the clouds in rain ; showing that 

 it is from the grateful coolness and moisture of those 

 showers that they are tempted to set out on their travels, 

 which they defer till those fall. Frogs 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 these 

 emigrants, no larger than my little finger nail. Swam- 

 merdam gives a most accurate account of the method and 

 situation in which the male impregnates the spawn of the 

 female. How wonderful is the oeconomy of Providence 

 with regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile ! While it is 

 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 Enghsh 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 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 covering 

 to the gills of the mud inguana, he proceeds to say that 



