My countrymen talk much of a bird that makes a clatter with his bill against a dead bough, or some old pales, calling it a jar-bird. I procured one to be shot in the very fact; it proved to be the Sitta europea (the nuthatch). Mr. Ray says that the less spotted woodpecker does the same. noise may be heard a furlong or more.

This

Now is the only time to ascertain the short-winged summer birds; for, when the leaf is out, there is no making any remarks on such a restless tribe; and, when once the young begin to appear, it is all confusion; there is no distinction. of genus, species, or sex.

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 suspect it is made by their wings.1

This morning I saw the golden-crowned wren, whose crown glitters like burnished gold. It often hangs, like a titmouse, with its back downwards.

1 The "humming" of the snipe has already been adverted to in Letter X., and will be found again noticed in Letter XXXIX. See foot-note anteà, p. 35. In addition to the authorities there quoted, the reader may be referred on this subject to Stevenson's "Birds of Norfolk," vol. ii. p. 316, and Saxby's "Birds of Shetland," p. 204. The lastnamed author remarks: "The many years' intimate acquaintance with the bird and its habits which I have enjoyed, confirms me in the now generally received opinion that the drumming' is produced by the vibration of the wings alone."--Ed.

and fishes.

LETTER XVII.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.

SELBORNE, June 18, 1768.

N Wednesday last arrived your agreeable letter of June the 10th. It gives me great satisfaction to find that you pursue these studies still with such vigour, and are in such forwardness with regard to reptiles

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 Cryptogamia in the sexual system of plants; and the case is the same with regard to some of the fishes; as the eel, &c.1

The method in which toads procreate and bring forth seems to be very much in the dark. Some authors say that they are viviparous; and yet Ray classes them among his oviparous animals; and is silent with regard to the manner of their bringing forth. Perhaps they may be ἔσω μὲν ὠοτόκοι, Ew de Cworóxos, as is known to be the case with the viper.

The copulation of frogs (or at least the appearance of itfor Swammerdam proves that the male has no penis intrans) is notorious to everybody; because we see them sticking upon each others' backs for a month together in the spring and yet I never saw or read of toads being observed in the same situation.3

Since this observation was published it has been demonstrated by Mr. Yarrell that eels deposit their spawn like other fishes.-ED.

2 Toads are oviparous.-ED.

3 In this respect toads do not differ from frogs.-Ed.

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 knowlege, with impunity. And I well remember the time, but was not eyewitness 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 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 garden steps; 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.

1 This question has since been set at rest. The old prejudice that they possess the power of communicating poison by their bite is wholly unfounded; and the fluid which they eject from the cloaca when frightened or handled is, in their case as in frogs, pure limpid water. The skin, however, has been ascertained by Dr. Davy to secrete an acid liquid, not perhaps poisonous, but capable of producing an uncomfortable sensation on the tongue; a secretion of somewhat similar qualities is poured out on the surface of the common land salamander of Europe. Mr. Bell has remarked that "the aqueous fluid above mentioned, which is thrown out in considerable quantities by a frog or toad on being taken in the hand, is held in a double bladder which opens into the cloaca; and this fact is connected with the absorbing power of the skin. The cutaneous surface of these animals is now known to serve the purposes of respiration; but in order to perform this function, it is necessary that it should be kept constantly in a moist condition. When placed in water or in a sufficiently damp situation, the surface of the body absorbs a considerable quantity of water, which is conveyed to the receptacle above mentioned, there to remain as in a reservoir for future use; and if the animal be exposed to a dry atmosphere, the fluid is re-absorbed, and again secreted on the surface of the skin, in order to keep up its respiratory function. This is the true history of the poisonous liquid of toads, as it is considered, which renders them the objects of dread and hatred to the ignorant of all parts of the country."-ED.

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 statė; 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 impregnates 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!1

Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances 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,

1 Mr. Bell has pointed out that the whole of the typical Batrachia, the frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, &c. undergo a complete metamorphosis. In the land species, which from their habits have no constant access to water, the aquatic portion of their existence, during which the gills remain attached, cannot be passed in that medium in the same manner as the frogs, &c. They undergo the metamorphosis therefore in the oviduct, before they are excluded from the mother, and come forth in the perfect condition. But in the other forms, the change takes place in the water, and the young live there for a time in a fish-like state, as regards not only their respiration, but most of the other functions of life.—ED.

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."

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.1

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.2

A neighbouring yeoman (to whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed and opened a female viper about

We agree with Mr. Bell in thinking that the efficacy of oil as a remedy against the bite of the viper has probably been overrated. It is generally believed in those parts of the country where vipers abound to be very efficacious as an external application, as is also the fat of the reptile itself. The application of ammonia, however, both externally and internally, is recommended on much surer grounds.-ED.

2 A blindworm, which Mr. Daniel kept for some weeks in confinement, fed upon the little white slug (Limax agrestis, Linn.) so common in fields and gardens, eating six or seven of them one after the other; but it did not eat every day. It invariably took them in one position: elevating its head slowly above its victim, it would suddenly seize the slug by the middle, in the same manner that a ferret or dog will generally take a rat by the loins; it would then hold it thus sometimes for more than a minute, when it would pass its prey through its jaws, and swallow the slug head foremost. It refused the larger slugs, and would not touch either young frogs or mice.-ED.