174 THE SMOOTH NEWT. 



I changed the water ; and it was very curious to see them swimming about with the flakes of 

 transparent membrane clinging to their sides. The skin of the paws is drawn off just like a 

 glove, every finger being perfect, and even the little wrinkles in the palms being marked. 

 These gloves look very pretty as they float in the water, but if removed they collapse into a 

 shapeless lump. 



The food of the Newt consists of worms, insects, and even the young of aquatic reptiles. 

 I have seen a large male Crested Newt make a savage dart at a younger individual of the same 

 species, but it did not succeed in eating the intended victim. 



This creature is very tenacious of life, and the muscular irritability of the body seems to 

 endure for a long time after the creature is dead. One of these animals, that had been dead 

 for some time, whose heart and lungs had .been removed, and whose limbs had been pinned 

 out ready for dissection, was so retentive of this singular irritability, that when the tail was 

 touched with the point of a scalpel, the body and limbs writhed so actively as to free the 

 limbs from their attachments. On repeating the experiment, it was found that this suscepti- 

 bility gradually departed, lingering longest towards the body. The eel possesses an even 

 greater degree of this muscular irritability, as is well known by all who have made an eel-pie 

 or seen it prepared. The tail of the blind-worm, too, which has already been described, is 

 equally irritable when separated from the body. 



The color of the Crested Newt is blackish or olive-brown, with darker circular spots, and 

 the under parts are rich orange-red, sprinkled with black spots. Along the sides are a number 

 of white dots, and the sides of the tail are pearly-white, becoming brighter in the spring. The 

 length of a large specimen is nearly six inches, of which the tail occupies rather more than 

 two inches and a half. 



THE STRAIGHT-LIPPED NEWT of Mr. Bell (Triton bibronii) is only ranked as a variety of 

 this species. In this variety the upper lip does not overhang the lower, and the skin is more 

 tubercular than in the ordinary examples. 



THE MARBLED NEWT (Triton marmordtus) is a continental species, and is found plenti- 

 fully in the southern parts of France. 



It is a much larger species than the preceding, often attaining the length of eight or nine 

 inches. It mostly lives in the water, but will leave that element voluntarily when the weather 

 is stormy, or even if the hot sunbeams are too powerful to please its constitution. A rather 

 powerful and not very pleasant odor is exhaled from this creature. During the winter it 

 leaves the water, seeks for some hole in a decaying tree, and there remains until the following 

 spring. The color of the Marbled Newt is olive-brown above, marbled with gray and 

 dotted with white on the back. The head is gray, with black dots and spots. Along the 

 centre of the back runs a streak of white and orange, and the under parts are dotted with 

 white. 



THE SMOOTH NEWT is more terrestrial in its habits than the crested species, and is often 

 seen at considerable distances from water. 



By the rustics this most harmless creature is dreaded as much as the salamander 

 in France, and the tales related of its venom and spite are almost equal to those already 

 mentioned. During a residence of some years in a small village, I was told some very 

 odd stories about this Newt, acd my own powers of handling these terrible creatures with- 

 out injury was evidently thought rather supernatural. Poison was the least of its crimes, 

 for it was a general opinion among the rustics in charge of the farm-yard that my poor 

 Newts killed a calf at one end of a farm-yard, through the mediumship of its mother, 

 who saw them in a water-trough at the other end ; and that one of these creatures bit a 

 mail on his thumb as he was cutting grass in the church-yard, and inflicted great damage on 

 that member. 



i 



The worst charge, however, was one which I heard from the same person. A woman, he 

 told me, had gone to the brook to draw water, when an Effert, as he called it, jumped out of 



