I50 



THE OREGON NATURALIST. 



when hunting food, but lie still in their 

 hiding places, half buried in the damp 

 ground, and content themselves with such 

 grubs, earthworms or insects as are oblig- 

 ing enough to come up to be eaten. 



They do not change their shapes any 

 more, but they do shed their skins now 

 and then and get new coats. It is said 

 that they swallow their cast off skins 

 though 1 have never seen them do this. 



There are many different kinds of 

 salamanders. Some kinds are of a dull 

 blue black color, others are a beautiful red 

 or yellow with bright black spots, stripes 

 or bars. Still another kind has clear 

 white bars across his black back and is 

 called the marbled salamander, while 

 another kind is called the tiger salamand- 

 er on account of the yellow stripes down 

 its sides. 



Some of them are soft weak and help- 

 less looking and make no attempt to es- 

 cape when found, but although all of 

 them are sluggish in their dispositions 

 there are a few that can move quite rapidly 

 when scared, travelling with a gait that 

 is a strong aud wonderful combination 

 of squirming, running and leaping. You 

 can never understand this singular way 

 of travelling until you fm.i an active 

 salamander and watch him run. You 

 must be careful, however, not to play \\nth 

 the little fellows too much for they are 

 very soft and easily hurt. 



Salamanders are found so often in damp 

 old cellars, in dark caves and other gloomy 

 places where superstitious people might 

 imagine ghosts would stay that the 

 ignorant imagine that there is some- 

 thing ghostly and supernatural about 

 them. Many years ago people actually 

 believed that salamanders could live in the 

 fire. Foolish as this appears to us it was 

 really believed until a philosopher wiser 

 than the rest put one in the fire to try it. 

 This was a cruel experiment, for of course 

 the poor little animal was burned up at 



once, but it settled forever the story of 

 salamanders living in fire. 



There are still people who believe that 

 these harmless little animals are poisonous 

 and who kill them whenever they can find 

 them, but this is the result of the grossest 

 ignorance. The salamander will not try 

 to bite and could not hurt you if it did. 

 No one who understands how curious, 

 beautiful and innocent they are could ever 

 harm one of them. 



Salamanders do not make satisfactory 

 pets, yet 1 have kept a good many of them 

 to study their habits. 1 once shut up some 

 marbled salamanders in a pen on the 

 ground, with old chunks of wood for them 

 to hide under. They never showed any 

 sign of becoming tame but would lie hid 

 all the time and refused to eat when 1 was 

 watching them and at last they burrowed 

 out and escaped. 



Another that I tried to keep was brown, 

 dotted over with white spots, and was 

 one of the kind called scaly or four toed 

 salamander. One day when it was crawl- 

 ing about over a piece of bark, the bark 

 tipped up and the salamander fell o:i his 

 back. Instead of turning over again the 

 little animal lay perfectly still as if dead, 

 until 1 touched him and then he was all 

 right again. This, 1 found, was his usual 

 way of meeting trouble, simply lying still. 

 His limbs appeared to.be vetv Teeble, 

 and yet he climbed up the side of a glass 

 jar in an effort to escape and was reward- 

 ed for his labor by being set at liberty in 

 a safe place. 



One day when 1 was handling a slimy 

 salamander it wrapped its tail around 

 one of my fingers and held on for awhile 

 head downwards. I afterwards saw it 

 repeat this trick frequently, hanging by its 

 tail from the stem of some plant. 



Sakunanders bury themselves in the 

 ground and sleep through the winter with- 

 out food. 



