54 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
serts, in a letter to the Royal Society, dated June tlie 5tli, 1766, 
in his account of the mud inguana, an amphibious bipes from 
South Carolina, that the water-eft, or newt, is only the larva 
Tadpoles. 
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 coverings to 
the gills of the mud inguana, he proceeds to say that " the 
form of these pennated coverings approach very near to what 
I have some time ago observed in the larva or aquatic state 
of our English lacerta, known by the name of eft, or newt ;* 
which serve them for coverings to their gills, and for fins to 
swim with while in this state ; and which they lose, as well as 
the fins of their tails, when they change their state and become 
land animals, as I have observed, by keeping them alive for some 
time myself.^'t 
the R. temporaria' (the common kind) " is probable from the circumstance of Dr. Stark^s having, 
observed osteological differences between them and the species just alluded to. But," he con- 
tinues, " I think it remains to be shown that they are really the R. esculenta" The edible frog is 
larger than the common species, of an olive-green colour, spotted witli black. It has three lon- 
gitudinal streaks of yellow down the back ; under parts yellowish. — Ed. 
* These curious creatures, very co.mmonly known when upon land by the term eft^ and in the 
water by that of newt, \ do not permanently reside in either element, as I shall presently show. 
They constitute the modern genus triton, and are not to be confotmded with the saurian, or lizard 
tribe, which in shape they resemble, but from which they essentially differ. They are not rep- 
tiles, as that appellation is now judiciously limited (all of which produce upon land, and are more 
or less covered with scales), but pertain to the newly-estabiished equivalent sub-class amphibia^ 
propagating by spawn, which is vivified subsequeirtly to its extrusion, and which (at least in our 
native species) is deposited near the surface on aquatic herbage, in long catenated strings. They 
belong to the family salamandridoE, which, together with the ranidcB (comprising the frogs and 
toads), is arranged in the first order, or primary division of the sub-class caducibranchia, or those 
with deciduous gills, that exist for a certain period in a tadpole or larva state, and cast several suc- 
cessive skins before assuming the adult appearance, breathing during the first stage of their exist- 
ence by means of gills, and afterwards by lungs. It is stated that they do not propagate till the 
third year. They are harmless, inoffensive animals, as indeed are all the members of this sub-class ; 
and, althongh some of them may not, perhaps, come exactly up to our notions of beauty and 
seemliness, there is nothing in them to merit our disgust, nor to excite our hatred and abhor- 
rence, nought whatever to extenuate the senseless persecution with which they are too generally 
assailed by the vulgar. Neither these nor a single member of the lizard tribe are at all venom, 
t By many the term eft is applied to the T- palustris, and newt to the T. punctatus. — Ed. 
