272 JORDAN. [Vol. VIII. 



appear generally to recognize the presence of food by smell 

 or taste rather than by sight. If a few bits of chopped meat 

 are put quietly into an aquarium the newts at first take no 

 apparent notice of its presence, but after a few seconds they 

 begin to stir around uneasily and are soon moving slowly over 

 the floor of the aquarium with noses close to the bottom like 

 hounds on the scent. As soon as a morsel of meat comes 

 in contact with the snout it is snapped up with a quickness 

 that is in marked contrast to the newt's previous ignorance 

 of its precise whereabouts. When roused or very hungry, 

 however, the newts will catch bits of sinking meat, rapidly 

 swimming insect larvae, water beetles, and other moving 

 objects. It seems reasonable to suppose that there are 

 tactile corpuscles on the end of the snout which impart 

 this ability to detect objects in motion. It often happens 

 that when several newts are being fed together in the same 

 aquarium, the legs and tails of some of them are snapped at 

 by their indiscriminating fellows with quite as much avidity as 

 are pieces of meat. The individuals thus attacked frequently 

 emit a faint cry or squeak resembling the sound made by draw- 

 ing a wet finger rapidly over a plate of glass. 



In such cases, where the stimulus of the neighborhood of 

 food causes the newt to snap at any moving object without 

 regard to the object's connections, it certainly seems as if tac- 

 tile and not visual sensations must be predominant. Bateson 

 ('89) has shown that many fishes, such as the skate, dogfish, 

 sole and sterlet, habitually rely upon scent (taste T) and to some 

 extent upon touch in seeking their food, while sight plays little 

 or no part. The newts appear in this respect to resemble 

 closely these fishes. In the newt, as in other aquatic animals, 

 there is probably little distinction to be drawn between taste 

 and smell. The stimulus must necessarily be a special molec- 

 ular vibration that informs the animal of the presence of a 

 distant object. The sense is like that of "smell" in ob- 

 taining cognizance of bodies at a distance, and like that of 

 "taste" in obtaining it through the medium of a solution. 



With proper food and care newts are easily kept for a long 

 time in captivity. I have kept 250 of them in aquaria from 



