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, in his account of the mud
inguana, an amphibious bides, from South Carolina, that the water-
eft, or newt, is only the larva of the land-eft, as tadpoles are of
frogs.
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