54 
NA.TURAL HISTOiRY OF SELBORNE. 
serts, in a letter to the Royal Society, dated June the 5th, 1766, 
m his account of the mud inguana, an amphibious hipes from 
Southi 6Iaxolina„j that the water-eft, or newt, is only the larva 
Twdpolies. 
of the land-eft, as tadpolesf are of frogs. Best 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 ft. temporcria" (the coinmon kind) " is probable from th< circumstance of Dr Stark's having 
observed osteological differences between them and the species just alluded to. But," he con- 
tinues, *M think it remains to be shown that they are really the R. escdentn.'" The edible frog is 
larger than the common species, of an olive-greeu colour, spotted with black. It has three lon- 
gitudinal streaks of yellow down the back ; under parts yellowish. — Ed. 
* These curious crtatures, very commonly known when upon land by the term eft, and in the 
water by that ofnev t,f do not permanently reside in either element, as I shall presently show. 
They constitute the modera genus triton, and are not to be confounded with the saurian, or lizard 
tribe, which in shape they resemble, but fr«m 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-established equivalent sub-class amphibia, 
propagating by spaJi'n, which is vi^^fied subsequeiwtly to its extrusion, and which (at least in our 
native species) is d"p©sited near the surface on aquatic herbage, in long catenated strings. They 
belong to the family salnmandritUc, which, together with the ranidce (comprisrng the frogs and 
toads), is arranged in the first order, or primary division of the sub-class caducibravchia, or those 
with deciduous gills, that exist for a tertaio period in a tadpole or larva state, and cast several suc- 
cessive skins before assumlug the adult appearance, breathing during the first stage of their exist- 
ence by means of gills, atsd afterwards by lungs. It is stated that they do not propagate till the 
third ye^r. They are harmless, inoffensive animals, as indeed arc all the members of this sub-class ; 
Slid, althowgh some of them may not, perhaps, come exactly up to our notions of beauty and 
seemiiuess, there is nothing in ihem to merit our disgust, nor to excite our hatred and abhor- 
rence, nought whatever to exttnuKtc the senseless persecution with which the}-^ 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 </t is applied to the T". palustris, and newt to the T. punctattu. — E©. 
