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.' The serpent kind eat, I believe, but once in a year; or, rather, but only just at one season of the year.2 Country people talk much of a watersnake, 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

1 Upon this point Mr. Bell says:-I have been assured by a very honest and worthy gardener in Dorsetshire, that he had seen the young vipers enter the mouth of the mother when alarmed. I have never been able to obtain further evidence of the fact, though I have made the most extensive inquiries in my power. If it be untrue, the popular error may have arisen from the circumstance of fully formed young having been found in the abdomen of the mother, ready to be excluded. The actions of the young which were emancipated from the oviduct by White on a subsequent occasion (see Letter XXXI, to Daines Barrington) do not appear necessarily to bear upon the question, as there are many instances of the young of animals manifesting the habits and instincts of their species immediately on coming into the world—as in the case of young ducks seeking the water, &c.— Ed.

2 The slow power of digestion possessed by serpents renders them capable of remaining a long time without food. If a snake swallows a frog, or a viper a mouse, it is several weeks before it is digested. It is probable, therefore, that they do not eat above three or four times in the course of a summer, and in winter not at all.-ED.

F

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

LETTER XVIII.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.

SELBORNE, July 27, 1768.

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.

2

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, male and female; the females big with spawn; some lamperns; some bulls-heads; but I could procure no minnows. The basket will be in Flect Street by eight this evening; so I hope Mazel3 will have them fresh and fair to-morrow morning. I gave some

1 See Letter XXII.

2 G. pungitius, the ten-spined stickleback, although generally distributed, seems to be nowhere so abundant as the common stickleback, G. aculeatus.-ED.

3 Peter Mazel, the engraver of the plates of Pennant's "British Zoology."-ED.

directions, in a letter, to what particulars the engraver should be attentive.

Finding, while I was on a visit, that I was within a reasonable distance of Ambresbury, I sent a servant over to that town, and procured several living specimens of loaches, which he brought safe and brisk in a glass decanter. They were taken in the gullies that were cut for watering the meadows. From these fishes (which measured from two to four inches in length) I took the following description: "The loach, in its general aspect, has a pellucid appearance; its back is mottled with irregular collections of small black dots, not reaching much below the linea lateralis, as are the back and tail fins; a black line runs from each eye down to the nose; its belly is of a silvery white; the upper jaw projects beyond the lower, and is surrounded with six feelers, three on each side; its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller; the fin behind its anus small; its dorsal fin large, containing eight spines; its tail, where it joins to the tail fin, remarkably broad, without any taperness, so as to be characteristic of this genus; the tail fin is broad, and square at the end. From the breadth and muscular strength of the tail it appears to be an active nimble fish."

In my visit I was not very far from Hungerford, and did not forget to make some inquiries concerning the wonderful method of curing cancers by means of toads. Several intelligent persons, both gentry and clergy, do, I find, give a great deal of credit to what was asserted in the papers; and I myself dined with a clergyman who seemed to be persuaded that what is related is matter of fact; but, when I came to attend to his account, I thought I discerned circumstances which did not a little invalidate the woman's story of the manner in which she came by her skill. She says of herself, "that labouring under a virulent cancer,

1 Mr. Bennett states that Ambresbury had become notorious for its loaches, on account of sportsmen there frequently, in frolic, swallowing one of them alive in a glass of white wine; but the fish is by no means a local one. It occurs generally throughout the country in brooks and rivulets, lurking under stones.-Ed.

she went to some church where there was a vast crowd; on going into a pew, she was accosted by a strange clergyman; who, after expressing compassion for her situation, told her that if she would make such an application of living toads as is mentioned, she would be well." Now is it likely that this unknown gentleman should express so much. tenderness for this single sufferer, and not feel any for the many 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 cancerdoctress, finds it expedient to amuse the country with this dark and mysterious relation.

The water-eft has not, that I can discern, the least appearance of any gills; for want of which it is continually rising to the surface of the water to take in fresh air.1 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 larvæ for the larvae of insects are full of eggs, which they exclude 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 colour; and some have fins up their tail and back, and some have not.2

This applies only to the adult; the young during the first months of their existence have external gills.—ED.

2 The appearance of fin-like expansions on the back and tail of the several species of Triton is confined to the male, and is only found in that sex at the season of reproduction.- ED.

LETTER XIX.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.

3

SELBORNE, Aug. 17, 1768.

HAVE now, past dispute, made out three distinct species of the willow wrens (Motacilla trochili) which constantly and invariably use distinct notes.1 But at the same time, I am obliged to confess that I know nothing of your willow lark. In my letter of April the 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 Motacilla trochilus; 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 white. I have specimens of the three sorts now lying before me; and can discern that there are three gradations of sizes, and that the least has black legs, and the other two flesh-coloured ones. The yellowest bird is considerably the largest, and has its quill feathers and secondary feathers tipped with white, which the others have not. This last haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a sibilous grasshopper-like noise, now and then, at short intervals, shivering a little with its wings when it sings; and is, I make no doubt now, the Regulus non cristatus of Ray; which he says "cantat voce stridulâ locusto." Yet this great ornithologist never suspected that there were three species.

1 See antea, pp. 56, 57.

2 Brit. Zool. edit. 1776, octavo, p. 381.-G. W.

3 This is evidently the Wood wren, Ph. sibilatrix.—ED.