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.* 
LETTER XYIIl. 
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 pknty. 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 j.n 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.f 
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. 
