forth. Perhaps they may be rw pèr worónos, ï1⁄2w di Zworizo, as is known to be the case with the viper.*

The copulation of frogs (or at least the appearance of it, for Swammerdam proves that the male has no penis intrans,) is notorious to every body; because we see them sticking upon each other's backs for a month together in the spring; and yet I never saw, or read, of toads being observed in the same situation. 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.

• Toads are oviparous. Mr Bell of London, a zealous ophiologist, has lately confirmed the fact recorded by Schneider, that toads devour the skin which they shed. In one instance, he witnessed the whole process of the shedding of the cuticle: it became divided longitudinally along the back and the abdomen; by the action of the hinder leg on one side, the skin was detached as far as the fore leg; the same operation was next effected on the other side. The loosened exuvia were then drawn forward by the combined action of the mouth and of the anterior legs, and were immediately swallowed. Zool. Jour.-Mr Bell adds, that in others of the bactrachian reptiles, the ranæ and salamandræ, no swallowing of the exuvia took place.-W. J.

+ The copulation of frogs and toads is performed in the same manner. The spermatic fluid is passed upon the ova at the time they are expelled from the female. The ova of the frog are laid in conglutinated masses; those of the toad in long chain-like strings. The ova of the latter are also much smaller. W. J.

'I have been informed also, from undoubted au thority, that some ladies (ladies you will say of peculiar taste) took a fancy to a toad, which they nourished, summer after summer, for many years, till he grew to a monstrous size, with the maggots which turn to flesh flies. The reptile used to come forth every evening from a hole under the gardensteps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident, the creature languished for some time and died.

I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive reading of the excellent account there is from Mr Derham, in Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation (p. 365), concerning the migration of frogs from their breeding ponds. In this account, he at once subverts that foolish opinion of their dropping from the clouds in rain; showing that it is from the grateful coolness and moisture of those showers that they are tempted to set out on their travels, which they defer till those fall. Frogs are as yet in their tadpole state; but, in a few weeks, our lanes, paths, fields, will swarm for a few days with myriads of those emigrants, no larger than my little finger nail. Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of the method and situation in which the male impreg nates the spawn of the female. How wonderful is the economy of Providence with regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile! While it is an aquatic it has a fish-like tail, and no legs; as soon as the legs sprout, the tail drops off as useless, and the animal betakes itself to the land!

Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he ad

vances that the rana arborea is an English reptile; it abounds in Germany and Switzerland.

It is to be remembered that the salamandra aquatica of Ray (the water-newt or eft) will frequently bite at the angler's bait, and is often caught on his hook. I used to take it for granted that the salamandra aquatica was hatched, lived, and died, in the water. But John Ellis, Esq. F.R.S. (the coralline Ellis) asserts, in a letter to the Royal Society, dated June the 5th, 1766, in his account of the mud inguana, an amphibious bipes from South Carolina, that the water-eft, or newt, is only the larva of the land-eft, as tadpoles are of frogs. Lest 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 approaches 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."*

Mr Ellis is right. The young of the triton palustris et aquaticus of Fleming, salamandra exigua et platycauda of Dr Rusconi, remain in a tadpole, or comparatively imperfect state, for some time after exclusion from the egg, and undergo several metamorphoses previous to arriving at maturity. Dr Rusconi says, the young of salamandra platycauda is not capable to reproduce for three years. See some very interesting information upon the transformation of these animals, in a long paper published at Pavia by

F

Linnæus, in his Systema Naturæ, hints at what Mr Ellis advances, more than once.

Providence has been so indulgent to us as to allow of but one venomous reptile of the serpent kind in these kingdoms, and that is the viper. As you propose the good of mankind to be an object of your publications, you will not omit to mention common salad-oil as a sovereign remedy against the bite of the viper. As to the blind worm (anguis fragilis, so called because it snaps in sunder with a small blow), I have found, on examination, that it is perfectly innocuous. A neighbouring yeoman (to whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed and opened a female viper about the 27th of May; he found her filled with a chain of eleven eggs, about the size of those of a blackbird; but none of them were advanced so far towards a state of maturity as to contain any rudiments of young. Though they are oviparous, yet they are viviparous also, hatching their young within their bellies, and then bringing them forth. Whereas snakes lay chains of eggs every summer in my melon beds, in spite of all that my people can do to prevent them; which eggs do not hatch till the spring following, as I have often experienced. Several intelligent folks assure me, that they have seen the viper open her mouth and admit her helpless young down her throat on sudden surprises, just as the female opossum does her brood into the pouch under her belly, upon the like emergencies; and yet the London viper-catchers insist on it, to Mr Barrington, that no such thing ever happens,

Mauro Rusconi, on the natural history and structure of the aquatic salamander.-W. J.

The serpent kind eat, I believe, but once in a year; or, rather, but only just at one season of the year. Country people talk much of a water-snake, but, I am pretty sure, without any reason; for the common snake (coluber natrix) delights much to sport in the water, perhaps with a view to procure frogs and other food.

. I cannot well guess how you are to make out your twelve species of reptiles,* unless it be by the various species, or rather varieties, of our lacerti, of which Ray enumerates five. I have not had opportunity of ascertaining these, but remember well to have seen, formerly, several beautiful green lacerti on the sunny sandbanks near Farnham, in Surrey; and Ray admits there are such in Ireland.

XVIII.

I RECEIVED your obliging and communicative letter of June the 28th, while I was on a visit at a gentleman's house, where I had neither books to turn to, nor leisure to sit down, to return you an answer to many queries, which I wanted to resolve in the best manner that I am able.

A person, by my order, has searched our brooks, but could find no such fish as the gasterosteus pungitius; he found the gasterosteus aculeatus in plenty. This morning, in a basket, I packed a little earthen pot full of wet moss, and in it some sticklebacks,

* Dr Fleming enumerates just twelve species, of which one, the Natrix Dumfrisiensis, seems to be of very dubious authority as a species. I think it very probable that there may be more than one species of lacerta yet undiscovered, which will make up the number.-W. J.