Page:White - The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.djvu/69

 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. 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 these 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 oeconomy of Providence with regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile! While it is 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.

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, i