indubitable that not only their urine, but their saliva, blood, and gall possess a poisonous property. We learn from creditable authors that the Brazilian savages roast toads, and then reduce them to a powder, which they infuse into the meat or drink of their enemies to cause their death; for it occasions a dryness and inflammation of the throat, together with vomiting, hiccups, sudden fainting, delirium, severe pains in the joints and stomach, and sometimes dysentery. Persons afflicted in this manner, if the force of the poison admit of medicine, should immediately have recourse to purging and vomiting, with repeated walking, or the bath, to produce perspiration. For the same purpose the sick man is sometimes put into a tolerably hot oven, or placed inside a beast that has been newly slain. Various herbs and roots are also made use of to dissipate the poison, the chief of which is one called _nhambi_. If the juice of this herb be thrown on the back or head of the toad, after those parts have been rubbed a little on the ground, it will instantly kill the pestilent animal. This also is effected by means of tobacco. American toads are of a cinereous or light red colour, sometimes variegated, covered with warts, and bristly like a hedgehog. I have read that certain savages feed on a species of toad, but never witnessed it myself. European physicians say that toads, properly prepared by druggists, are useful as diuretics in dropsy, plague, and fevers, and they advise a bruised toad to be applied to the back, about the kidneys, by way of a cataplasm, in cases of dropsy. The oil of toads is useful for curing warts, according to Woytz. River crabs, hartshorn, the flowers of the vine, and other things, are recommended by the same authors as remedies for the poison of toads. There is also a great variety and abundance of frogs, which croak away in the mud, equally annoying to the inhabitants and to travellers. In other respects they are neither useful nor prejudicial, though in Europe they are employed both as medicine and food; but there is nothing to which you would not sooner persuade an American than to eat frogs, or make any other use of them. Leeches are always to be found in pools supplied solely with rain water; but I never saw any so large as ours. In the town of the Rosary, after a heavy shower the streets seemed full of leeches, and the Abipones, who always go barefoot, complained that they clung to their feet wherever they went; but in the space of an hour these troublesome guests all disappeared, having betaken themselves, most probably, to the adjoining lake. Of bats I have spoken in a former part of my history.