Page:White - The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.djvu/68

 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, sometimes analogous to that of the cryptogamia in the sexual system of plants: and the case is the same as regards some of the fishes: as the eel, etc.

The method in which toads procreate and bring forth seems to me 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 ' eso men ootokoi, exo de dzootokoi,(in Greek), 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 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 yet been 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 an hole under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the