66 
NATURAL HISTOBY 
species of reptiles, unless it be hy the various species, or 
rather varieties, of our Lacertce, of wMcli Raj enumerates 
five. I have not had opportunity of ascertaining these; 
but remember well to have seen, formerly, several beautiful 
green Lacertce on the sunny sandbanks near Farnham, in 
Surrey ; ^ and Ray admits there are such in Ireland. 
LETTER XVIIL 
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIliE. 
Selborne, July 27, 1768. 
RECEIVED your obliging and communi- 
cative 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 bulls-heads ; but I 
could procure no minnows. The 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 
1 See Letter XXH. 
2 G. pungitius, the ten-spined stickleback, although generally dis- 
tributed, seems to be nowhere so abundant as the common stickleback, 
G, aculeatus. — Ed. 
^ Peter Mazel, the engraver of the plates of Pennant's "British 
Zoology." — Ed. 
