urs, etc., etc.

LETTER XVII.

SELBORNE, _June 18th_, 1768.

Dear Sir,--On Wednesday last arrived your agreeable letter of June 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 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 _cryptogamia_ in the sexual
system of plants: and the case is the same with regard to some of the
fishes, as the eel, etc.

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 [Greek text],
as is known to be the case with the viper.

The copulation of frogs (or at least the appearance of it) is notorious
to everybody, 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.

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.

I need not remind a gentleman of your extensive reading of the excellent
account there is fr