THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE.  - 49 
thousands that daily languish under this terrible disorder ? 
Would he not have made use of this invaluable nostrum for 
his own emolument ; or at least, by some means of publication 
or other, have found a method of making it public for the 
good of mankind? In short, this woman (as it appears to me) 
having set up for a cancer-doctress, finds it expedient to amuse 
the country with this dark and mysterious relation. 
The water-eft has not, that I can discern, the least appear- 
ance of any gills; for want of which it is continually rising to 
the surface of the water to take in fresh air. I opened a big- 
bellied one indeed, and found it full of spawn. Not that this 
circumstance at all invalidates the assertion that they are 
larve ; for the /arve of insects are full of eggs, which they ex- 
clude the instant they enter their last state. The water-eft is 
continually climbing over the brims of the vessel, within which 
we keep it in water, and wandering away; and people every 
summer see numbers crawling out of the pools where they are 
hatched, up the dry banks. There are varieties of them, 
differing in color ; and some have fins up their tail and back, 
and some have not. 
LETTER XIX. 
SELBORNE, August r7th, 1768. 
I have now, past dispute, made out three distinct species of 
the willow-wrens which constantly and invariably use distinct 
notes. But at the same time I am obliged to confess that I 
know nothing of your willow-lark. In my letter of April 18th, 
I had told you peremptorily that I knew your willow-lark, but 
had not seen it then; but when I came to procure it, it proved 
in all respects a very willow-wren, only that it is a size larger 
than the two other, and the yellow-green of the whole upper 
part of the body is more vivid, and the belly of a clearer 
