The Natural History of Selborne, 1879/Letter 17
LETTER XVII.
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.[e1]
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 ἔοω μὲν ὠοτόκοι, ἔξω δε ζωοτόκοι,[1] 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 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 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.[e2]
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 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.[e3] 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 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!
Merret, I trust, is widely mistaken when he advances that the Rana arborea is an English reptile; it abounds in Germany and Switzerland. [e4]
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 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.[e5]
Metamorphoses of Newt.
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.
Viper.
Ringed Snake.
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.[e6] A neighbouring yeoman (to whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed and opened a female viper about the 27th 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.
Blindworm.
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.[e7] The serpent kind eat, I believe, but once in a year; or rather, but only just at one season of the year.[e8] 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.[e9]
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.
notes to letter xvii.
e1 ↑ Toads lay eggs as frogs do. Every dweller in the country will be familiar with the masses of jelly-like substance in the ditches which constitutes the spawn of frogs. That of toads forms long strings instead of masses.
e2 ↑ There seems to be little doubt that the secretion which exudes from the tubercles on the toad's skin is very offensive, and might irritate a delicate skin. Dogs will not mouth them a second time.
e3 ↑ There are so many accounts of frogs actually falling with the rain, as well as small fish, that the possibility of this happening should not be too incredulously denied. It is possible, and indeed no other explanation can be entertained, that they may have been swept up from the earth or water by a whirlwind, as sticks and straws are, and then dropped down. Those who have seen a reed stack carried into the air by a "rodges blast" on the Norfolk marshes, would not consider this suggestion an impossible one.
e4 ↑ This pretty green frog which lives on trees, and is sometimes kept as a pet, is not considered a native species. Mr. J.G. Wood says he saw a colony of them in a hole in an apple-tree at Marston, near Oxford; but they must have been introduced there, or strayed from someone who kept them.
e5 ↑ There is but one species of newt, which goes through all its changes in the water. The male has a beautiful waving crest along its back and tail. When young it has gills; but when it reaches the perfect state it has to rise constantly to the surface to take in a supply of air. It is possible that by the term land-eft, White may refer to the lizard, which belongs to a different family. Most country people of the lower order are dreadfully afraid of newts or effets, and think their bite is deadly. As a fact, however, they are quite harmless.
e6 ↑ The blind-worm or slow-worm does not need a blow to induce it to cast off its tail. A sudden fright is sufficient. While you are looking at the tail wriggling and jumping about, the body quietly makes its escape.
e7 ↑ The story of the viper swallowing her young ones for their safety is so persistently told from all parts of the country by persons of veracity, that it seems cruel to doubt their accuracy of observation. No scientific and accurate naturalist has, as far as I am aware, actually seen the occurrence. Mr. Jesse seems satisfied that it does happen from the evidence he has collected, and he says that a viper-catcher on the Brighton Downs told him that he had often witnessed the fact. I think the question is still unsettled. I have never seen it myself, and I have seen a great number of vipers in close proximity.
e8 ↑ Snakes eat oftener than once a year, but still one meal of a frog or mouse will take a good-sized snake a long time to digest.
e9 ↑ The common snake takes readily to the water, and swims sometimes altogether beneath it, and sometimes with the head and neck above. I have very often seen them doing this; and although I knew they were harmless, I did not like them diving close by me when I was swimming. There is no English species of "water-snake."
- ↑ This can possibly be translated as: 'laying eggs on the inside, but viviparous on the outside' (Wikisource-ed.)