water-eft

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.

The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 Gilbert White 1756

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.

The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 Gilbert White 1756

What a fine fellow our English water-eft is; 'Triton paludis Linnaei' -- _e come guizza_ (_that_ you can't say in another language; cannot preserve the little in-and-out motion along with the straightforwardness!) -- I always loved all those wild creatures God '_sets up for themselves_' so independently of us, so successfully, with their strange happy minute inch of a candle, as it were, to light them; while we run about and against each other with our great cressets and fire-pots.

The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 Robert Browning 1850