sent president of the College of Physicians, was induced, by her friends, to try the experiment; and as he saw the case was desperate, and that it would quiet her mind as well as theirs, he permitted the trial. During the whole continuance of their application, she could never thoroughly perceive that they sucked her; but that did not prevent their swelling and dying, as in the former instances. Once, indeed, she said, she thought that one of them seemed to suck; but the physician, and those who attended, could not perceive any appearance of it. Thus, after all, it is a doubt whether these animals die by the internal or the external application of the cancerous poison.

Of this animal there are several varieties; such as the Water and the Land Toad, which probably differ only in the ground-colour of their skin. In the first it is more inclining to ash colour, with brown spots; in the other, the colour is brown, approaching to black. The water toad is not so large as the other; but both equally breed in that element. The size of the toad with us is generally from two to four inches long; but, in the fenny countries of Europe, I have seen them much larger; and not less than a common crab, when brought to table. But this is nothing to what they are found in some of the tropical climates, where travellers often, for the first time, mistake a toad for a tortoise. Their usual size is from six to seven inches; but there are some still larger, and as broad as a plate. Of these some are beautifully streaked and coloured ; some studded over, as if with pearls; others bristled with horns or spines; some have the head distinct from the body, while others have it so sunk in, that

the animal appears without a head. All these are found in the tropical climates in great abundance, and particularly after a shower of rain. It is then that the streets seem entirely paved with them; they then crawl from their retreats, and go into all places, to enjoy their favourite moisture. With us the opinion of its raining toads and frogs, has long been justly exploded; but it is still entertained in the tropical countries, and that not only by the savage natives, but the more refined settlers, who are apt enough to add the prejudices of other nations to their own.*

It would be a tedious, as well as an useless task, to enter into all the minute discriminations of these animals, as found in different countries or places; but the Pipal, or the Surinam Toad, is too strange a creature, not to require an exact description. There is not, perhaps, in all nature, a more extraordinary phenomenon, than that of an animal breeding and hatching its young in its back; from whence, as from a kind of hot-bed, they crawl, one after the other, when come to maturity.

The pipal is in form more hideous than even the common toad, Nature seeming to have marked all those strange-mannered animals with peculiar

[* Among this numerous family there is one, which, for horrid and deformed appearance, probably exceeds all other created beings. This is the Horned Toad, of South America. The colour is cinereous, with brown stripes. The eye-lids project in a singular manner, and give it the appearance as if the eyes were placed at the bottom of a pair of sharp-pointed horns: the head is very large, and the mouth is so enormous, as to exceed half the length of its body. To add to its loathsome appearance, it is likewise clothed all over, except the head and feet, with short sharp spines.]

deformity. The body is flat and broad; the head small; the jaws, like those of a mole, are extended, and evidently formed for rooting in the ground: the skin of the neck forms a sort of wrinkled collar: the colour of the head is of a dark chesnut, and the eyes are small: the back, which is very broad, is of a lightish grey, and seems covered over with a number of small eyes, which are round, and placed at nearly equal distances. These eyes are very different from what they seem; they are the animal's eggs, covered with their shells, and placed there for hatching. These eggs are buried deep in the skin, and in the beginning of incubation but just appear; and are very visible when the young animal is about to burst from its confinement. They are of a reddish, shining yellow colour; and the spaces between them are full of small warts, resembling pearls.

This is their situation, previous to their coming forth but nothing so much demands our admiration, as the manner of their production. The eggs, when formed in the ovary, are sent, by some internal canals, which anatomists have not hitherto described, to lie and come to maturity under the bony substance of the back in this state they are impregnated by the male, whose seed finds its way by pores very singularly contrived, and pierces not only the skin, but the periosteum: the skin, however, is still apparently entire, and forms a very thick covering over the whole brood; but as they advance to maturity, at different intervals, one after another, the egg seems to start forward and burgeon from the back, becomes more yellow, and at last breaks; when the young one puts forth its head: it still,

however, keeps its situation, until it has acquired a proper degree of strength, and then it leaves the shell, but still continues to keep upon the back of the parent. In this manner the pipal is seen travelling with her wonderous family on her back, in all the different stages of maturity. Some of the strange progeny, not yet come to sufficient perfection, appear quite torpid, and as yet without life, in the egg: others seem just beginning to rise through the skin; here peeping forth from the shell; and there, having entirely forsaken their prison; some are sporting at large upon the parent's back; and others descending to the ground, to try their own fortune below.

Such is the description given us of this strange production by Seba; in which he differs from Ruysch, who affirms that the young ones are bred in the back of the male only, where the female lays her eggs. I have followed Seba, however; not because he is better authority, but because he is more positive of the truth of his account, and asserts, assuredly, that the eggs are found on the back of the female only. Many circumstances, however, are wanting towards completing his information; such as a description of the passage by which the egg finds its way into the back; the manner of its fecundation; the time of gestation; as also a history of the manners of this strange animal itself; but by a prolixity that too much prevails among naturalists at present, he leaves the most interesting object of curiosity, to give us a detailed description of the legs and claws of the pipal, about which we have very little concern.

The male pipal is every way larger than the female,

and has the skin less tightly drawn round the body. The whole body is covered with pustules, resembling pearls; and the belly, which is of a bright yellow, seems as if it were sewed up from the throat to the vent, a seam being seen to run in that direction. This animal, like the rest of the frog kind, is most probably harmless; though we are told of the terrible effects resulting from its powder when calcined. This, however, must certainly be false no creature whatever, when calcined, can be poisonous; for the fire burns away whatever might have been dangerous in their composition: all animal substances, when calcined, being entirely the same.

CHAP. IV.

Of Lizards in general.

THERE is scarcely a naturalist that has treated of Lizards, but has a particular manner of ranking them, in the scale of animated nature. Ray, rather struck with the number of their legs, than their habits and conformation, has exalted them among quadrupeds; while Linnæus, attentive only to their long slender forms, has degraded them among serpents. Brisson gives them a distinct class by themselves, under the name of reptiles. Klein gives them a class inferior to beasts, under the name of Naked Quadrupeds. Some, in short, from their