COMMON SMOOTH NEWT OR EFT. 157 



the first-mentioned in the habit of going clown the 

 throats of those people who are so silly as either to 

 go to sleep in the fields with their mouths open, or 

 to drink from the streams in which the dark 

 6 lewkers ? (newts in the aquatic state) harbour : they 

 are also said to be swallowed by the thirsty cattle. 

 In consequence, the country people kill them when- 

 ever they meet with them on land, and poison the 

 stream they are found in, by putting lime into the 

 cattle's drinking-pools. In either case the result is 

 the same, the reptile taking up his quarters in the 

 interior of his victim in some way, it would puzzle a 

 physiologist to explain how. It contrives to live on 

 the nutriment taken by the luckless individual or 

 animal, so that, deprived of its nourishment, the 

 latter pines away ; nay, so comfortable does the 

 newt make herself that, not content with living by 

 herself, she contrives to bring up a little family. 

 Often have I been told of the man who got rid of a 

 mamma newt and six young ones by the following 

 recipe, which I am assured is infallible : — The 

 patient must abstain from all fluids for four-and- 

 twenty hours, and eat only salt meats; at the 

 expiration of that time, being very thirsty, he must 

 go and lie open-mouthed over a running stream — 

 the noisier the better ; when the newts, dying of 

 thirst, and hearing the music of the water, cannot 

 resist the temptation, but come forth to drink, and 



