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fome means of publication or other, have found a method of mat*
ing it public for the good of mankind ? In fhott, this woman (as
it appears to me) having fetup for a cancer-dodtrefs, finds it expedient
to amufe the country with this dark and myfterious
relation.
The water-eft-has .not,: .that I can difcern, the leaft appearance
of any gills,; for want of which i-t is, continually rifing to the fur-
face of the water to take in frelh air. I opened a big-bellied one
indeed, and found it full of fpawn Not that this cireumftanee; at
all invalidates the affertion that they .are larva: for the larva of
infefts are full of eggs, which they exclude the inftant they enter
their laft ftate, The water-eft is continually, climbing oyer the
brims .of the yefiel, within which w.e keep it in water, and wandering
away: and people every fu'm-mer fee numbers crawling, out of
the pools where they are hatched, up the dry banks. There are
varieties of them, differing in colour; .and fome have fin? up their
tail and back, and fome have not.
L E T T E R XIX.
TO THE S AM E .
D E A R SIR, Selborne, Aug. 17, 176*.
1 h a v e now, paft difpute, made out three diftindt fpecies of
the willow-wrens (motacilla troc'hili) which conjlahtly and invariably
ufe diftindt notes. But, at the fame time, I am obliged to
confefs that I know nothing of your willow-lark f . . In my letter
y Brit, Zooh, edit. 1776, ottavo, p, 381,
of
of April the 18th, I had told you peremptorily that I knéw your
willow-lark, but had not feen it then : but, when I camé to procure
it,' it proved, in all refpedls, a very motacilla trochilus ; only
that it is', a fize larger than the two other, and the yellow-green
of the whole upper part of the body is more vivid, and the belly
of a clearer white. I have fpecimens of the three forts now lying
before me; and can difcern that there are three gradations of fizes>,
and that the,leaft has black legs, and thé'other two flefh-coloured
ones. The yelloweft bird is confiderably the largeft, and has it’s
quill-feathers and fecondary feathers' tipped with'whitey-which
the others have not. This laft haunts only the1 tops o f trees in
high beechen woodsy and makes a fibilous grafshopper-like noife,'
now and then, at fhort intervals, fluttering- a little with it’s wings
when it fings ; and is, I make no doubt now;- the rcgulus non
criftaius of Ray; which he fays ‘ c 'cantat voà Jlndulâ-locufta.” Yet
this great ornithologift never fufpedted that there were three
fpecies..
L E T T E R XX.
TO TH E S AM E .. .
J &ELBORNE,. October 8, 1768.
I t is, I find, miuHlogy as'it is-in botany r all nature is fo'full,
that that diftrift produces the greateft variety which is the moft /
examined. Several birds, which: are faid to belong to the north
only, are, it feems, often in the fouth-. I have difcovered this
fupmet .
v IA : m*1 v rf- 9
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