54 NATURAL HISTORY 
fom€ means of publication or other, have found a method of mak- 
ing it public for the good of mankind ? In fhort, this woman (as 
it appears to me) .having fet up for a cancer-doftrefs, finds it ex- 
pedient to amufe the country with this dark and myfterious 
relation. 
The water-eft has not, that I can difcern, the leaft appearance 
of any gills ; for want of which it is continually rifing to the fur- 
face of the water to take in frefh air. I opened a big-bellied one 
indeed, and found it full of fpawn. Not that this circumftance at 
all invalidates the alTertion that they are larva : for the larva of 
infeds are full of eggs, which they exclude the inflant they enter 
their laft ftate. The water-eft is continually climbing over the 
brims of the velTel, within which we keep it in water, and wander- 
ing away: and people every fummer fee numbers crawling, out of 
the pools where they are hatched, up the dry banks. There are 
varieties of them, differing in colour ; and fome have fins up their 
tail and back, and fome have not. 
LETTER XIX. 
TO THE SAME. 
DEAR SIR, Selborne, Aug. 17, 176S. 
I HAVE now, pad difpute, made out three diftindl fpecies of 
the willow-wrens (motacilL-e trochili) which conftantly and invariably 
ufe diftinft notes. But, at the fame time, I am obliged to 
confefs that I know nothing of your willow-lark y. In my letter 
y Brit. Zool. edit. 1776, oftavo, p. 381, 
of 
