HYJS'OBIIDAE. 517 



"This salamander is characteristic of a purely mountain fauna; an 

 inhabitant of mountain brooks at a considerable altitude." 



He was able to find none at 1500 meters or at 1850 meters. Finally 

 at greater altitudes in small streams in the Urgan-Tas Mts. between 

 Kopal and Djarkent, he found them in abundance. 



"In a large stream which flows in this region I took a series of 

 adults, and some of the egg-sacks. In the next days of my sojourn I 

 tried to hunt in other similar streams and I found salamanders in all 

 of them but no egg-sacks. All these streams are at about 1900-2000 

 meters of altitude and flow into a little river, the Kesken-Terek, at 

 about 1800 meters. The streams rise from springs on the mountain- 

 side. In these streams, which I would not really call streams, but 

 tiny brooks, some only \ arshin (7 inches) wide, the animals can be 

 found, but in those lower than 1850 meters I found none." 



"The sources of these brooks are rocky and the salamanders are 

 under the rocks in the daytime." "I only found two at the water 

 level on wet and moss-covered rocks, whose tops were out of water. 

 All the others were under stones in the water. Here they spend the 

 whole day. I never saw one come out from under the stone by his 

 own volition or swim freely in the water, or stay on the open bottom of 

 the stream in the daytime. Only towards beginning of evening they 

 come out from under the stones and even out of water, and you can 

 find them along the banks, and sometimes pretty far away among 

 Juniper bushes or in the grass." 



" Dissection of some of the specimens shows that the food is largely 

 made up of small crawfish, caddis-fly larvae and their tubes, beetles, 

 plants, much sand which probably came from the tubes, and even 

 pebbles as large as 6 mm. in diameter. As this food was not digested 

 and recently eaten the salamanders eat even in the daytime. 



" They lay eggs at the end of June, because I found in the first days 

 of July, 1908, eggs in cleavage stages, probably 5-6 days old, larvae 

 just hatched, mature eggs in which the process of hatching was 

 observed, and eggs not yet developed and freshly laid. 



"The young just before it emerges, wriggles back and forth and 

 breaks through the thin cover of the egg, goes through the opening, 

 and swims immediately to the bottom, swimming like a snake, with 

 legs flat against the body. 



"The egg-sacks are fastened to the under sides of flat stones in the 

 water. The water flows under such stones, so that the egg-sacks, 

 which are slim and spindle-shaped, and fastened by one end, are con- 

 tinually swept back and forth by the water. 



