THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. ae 5 
In breeding-time snipes play over the moors, piping and 
humming; they always hum as they are descending. Is not 
their hum ventriloquous like that of the turkey? Some sus- 
pect it is made by their wings. 
This morning I saw the golden-crowned wren, whose crown 
glitters like burnished gold. It often hangs like a titmouse, 
with its back downwards. 
LETTER XVII. 
SELBORNE, June 18th, 1768. 
On Wednesday last arrived your agreeable letter of June 
1oth. It gives me great satisfaction to find that you pursue 
these studies still with such vigor, and are in such forward- 
ness with regard to reptiles and fishes. 
The reptiles, few as they are, I am not acquainted with, so 
well as I could wish, with regard to their natural history. 
There is a degree of dubiousness and obscurity attending the 
propagation of this class of animals, something analogous to 
that of the cryp/ogamia in the sexual system of plants : and the 
case is the same with regard to some of the fishes ; as the 
eel, etc. 
It is strange that the matter with regard to the venom of 
toads has not been yet settled. ‘That they are not noxious to 
some animals is plain : for ducks, buzzards, owls, stone-curlews, 
and snakes eat them, to my knowledge, with impunity. And 
I well remember the time, but was not eye-witness to the fact 
(though numbers of persons were), when a quack at this village 
ate a toad to make the country people stare ; afterwards he 
drank oil. 
I have been informed also, from undoubted authority, that 
some ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy 
to a toad, which they nourished summer after summer, for 
