iSS 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



fornia and saw a good many of the same 

 plants there, but that they bloom only 

 once in a century is a fiction ; over there 

 they bloom every eight or ten years." 

 Vicar General M. J. Lavelle, The 

 Cathedral Rectory, New York City, in 

 answer to my letter, reports that the 

 family seems to be entirely extinct. 

 And that in only about sixty years after 

 they exhibited a plant a hundred years 

 old'! 



Salamander Pets. 



Michigan City, Indiana. 

 To the Editor: 



I think you may be interested to 

 learn of the spotted salamanders we 

 kept in the laboratory one winter in 

 northwestern Illinois. Some half a 

 dozen of the salamanders, which we 

 thought were Amblystoma tigrinum, 

 were brought into the laboratory in 

 September, some having been found 

 in cellars and others near ponds. They 

 were put in a small wooden tank with 

 seven small frogs about an inch and a 

 half long. 



One morning as I entered the labora- 

 tory, I heard the oddest little squeaky 

 cry from the direction of the tank, and 

 there was one of the salamanders start- 

 ing to swallow a frog. No wonder the 

 frog cried, though I had never dreamed 

 before that they could make any sound 

 but a croak. It took only a second to 

 reach in and grab Mr. Salamander by 

 the tail, and he was only too glad to 

 drop his prey immediately. As we had 

 no idea of letting the salamanders eat 

 up our cunning little frogs, the sala- 

 manders were exiled to a pail of damp 

 sand that happened to be near-by. 

 They burrowed down into it, and there 

 they spent the winter, just the little 

 black nose being visible in the opening 

 most of the time. Sometimes most of 

 them were entirelv buried under the 

 sand- We dug them out occasionally, 

 and they seemed quite as lively as when 

 we captured them in the fall. 



They ate earthworms greedily in a 

 peculiar way, making a sudden grab 

 at the worm and shaking it fiercely 

 from side to side for a second or two 

 before swallowing it. In the middle of 

 the winter, as they were in a warm 

 room all the time and not entirely dor- 

 mant, I tried to feed them beefsteak. 

 They wouldn't swallow it, so I resort- 



ed to forcible feeding, pushing the bits 

 of steak down their throats with a pair 

 of forceps until the involuntary mus- 

 cles took charge of the swallowing. 

 This was repeated two or three times 

 during the winter. 



Early in the spring we took them 

 out to a small pond and let them go- 



Another spring we found some sala- 

 mander eggs in late February or early 

 March, while ice still fringed the small 

 pond, a pond entirely dry in summer. 

 They were similar to frog's eggs, with 

 black yolks imbedded in gelatinous 

 material, but considerably larger and 

 in masses only an inch and a half in 

 diameter. In a few days the little tad- 

 poles hatched out, slender, brown, 

 shapeless things, a little over a quarter 

 of an inch long, clinging to the outside 

 of the egg. A few days later they de- 

 veloped tiny bunches of external gills 

 and began to swim about actively. 

 About the same time tiny spots appear- 

 ed scattered over the body. They were 

 longer and much more slender than 

 frog tadpoles. 



Some well-meaning, but misguided, 

 person caused their death by feeding 

 them an extra quantity of bread one 

 Friday afternoon. The week-end was 

 warm, and by Monday morning the 

 bread had fermented, and the little tad- 

 poles were all dead. 



Sincerely yours, 



Helen A. Southgate. 



Salamanders are not Reptiles. 



BY MR. G. T. K. NORTON, NEW YORK CITY. 



On page ioo of the September issue 

 of The Guide to Nature appears an ac- 

 count of a salamander, with one illus- 

 tration. In the second sentence of the 

 second paragraph the salamander is re- 

 ferred to as, "These reptiles seem to 

 be," etc. I trust you will pardon my 

 questioning the statement. Do not 

 salamanders belong to the class Am- 

 phibia — lizards to Reptilia? Are not 

 salamanders of the Order Urodela? I 

 believe salamanders are distinguished 

 from the lizards by having a skin rather 

 than scales. Is not the salamander 

 pictured Plethodon glutinosus? 



When I hear a man preach, I like to 

 see him act as if he were fighting bees. 



— Lincoln. 



