for this single sufferer, and not feel any for the many thousands
that daily languish under this terrible disorder? Would he not have
made use of this invaluable nostrum for his own emolument; or, at
least, by some means of publication or other, have found a method
of making it public for the good of mankind ? In short, this woman
(as it appears to me) having set up for a cancer-doctress, finds it
expedient to amuse the country with this dark and mysterious
relation.

The water-eft has not, that I can discern, the least appearance of
any gills; for want of which it is continually rising to the surface of
the water to take in fresh air. I opened a big-bellied one indeed, and
found it full of spawn. Not that this circumstance at all invalidates
the assertion that they are larvae: for the larvae of insects are full of
eggs, which they exclude the instant they enter their last state. The
water-eft is continually climbing over the brims of the vessel,
within which we keep it in water, and wandering away: and people
every summer see numbers crawling out of the pools where they
are hatched, up the dry banks. There are varieties of them, differing
colour; and some have fins up their tail and back, and some have
not.



Letter XIX
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire

Selborne, Aug. 17, 1768.

Dear Sir,