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. Lest I should be suspected to misunderstand his meaning, I
shall give it in his own words. Speaking of the opercula or covering
to the gills of the mud inguana, he proceeds to say that 'The forms
of these pennated coverings approach 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:'

Linnaeus, in his Systema Naturae, 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. 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