248 UPLAND AND MEADOW. 



ering of a feather, but why keep this up so long ? I am 

 positive, careful watch having been kept, that this pair 

 of hawks hovered, circled, and floated, if I may use the 

 expression, from seven in the morning until after four 

 in the afternoon. If they left their elevated outlook at 

 all it could have been but for a minute or two at most, 

 and in so short a time could have captured and eaten no 

 food. Do September hawks never get tired or hun- 

 gry? 



In the course of convereation with a conservative nat- 

 uralist, ten days ago, I expressed the opinion, which I 

 liave long held, that salamanders needed no tails. My 

 friend dissented at once. " If they do not need them," 

 said he, " they would long since have lost them." It 

 was, I admit, one of those assertions man is so often 

 heard to make, and then labors hard to recall it. Aquatic 

 salamanders, of course, need their tails quite as fully as 

 do fishes, and terrestrial species only were in my mind 

 when I spoke. 



Two years ago, when studying three species of land 

 salamanders, or semi-aquatic ones, I was surprised to 

 find so great a number with lacerated tails, or that 

 had lost a greater or less portion of the member. Dur- 

 ing the months of April and May, whenever opportu- 

 nity ofiFered, I watched the dusky and red "water liz- 

 ards," as the farmers call them, and while I could not 

 discover that the tails of the creatures were of any use, 

 I did witness n)any incidents that showed they were 

 frequently the direct cause of the animal's death or 

 maiming; and also that scores of them, with but mere 

 stumps of tails, were as active, as well conditioned, and, 



