THE NATURAL HISTORY 
LETTEE XVIT. 
ro THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 
On Wednesda}^ last arrived your agreeable letter of June the 
10th. It gives me great satisfaction to find thp„t you pursue 
these studies still with such vigour, and are in such forwardness 
with regard to reptiles and fishes. 
The reptiles, few as they are, I am not acquainted with so 
well as I could wish, with regard to their natural history. 
There is a degree of dubiousness and obscurity attending the 
propagation of this class of animals, something analogous to 
that of tlie cryptogamia in the sexual system of plants : and 
the case is the same with regard to some of the fishes ; as 
the eel, &c. 
The method in which toads procreate and bring forth seems 
to be very much in the dark. Some authors say that they are 
viviparous : and yet Kay classes them among his oviparous 
animals ; and is silent with regard to the manner of their 
bringing forth. Perhaps they may be eaco /jlIv (horoKot, e^co 
8e ^(ootokol, as is known to be the case with the viper. That 
of frogs is notorious to everybody : because we see them stick- 
ing upon each other's backs for a month together in the spring : 
and yet I never saw or read of toads being observed in the 
same situation. It is strange that the matter with regard to 
the venom of toads has not yet been settled. That they are not 
noxious to some animals is plain : for ducks, buzzards, owls, 
stone-curlews, and snakes eat them, to my knowledge, with 
impunity. And I well remember the time, but was not eye- 
witness to the fact (though numbers of persons were) when a 
quack at this village ate a toad to make the country-people 
stare; afterwards he drank oil. 
I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, that 
some ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy 
to a toad, which they nourished summer after summer, for many 
years, with the maggots which turn to flesh flies, till he grew to a 
