434 ALPINE EUROPE 



and Salzburg Alps, they inhabit the Tyrol and other parts of Austria, Switzerland, 

 southern France, upper Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Greece and its archipelago. 

 The Alpine bird, which is 14 inches long, is principally grey, with a black band 

 round the head and throat, and black lores. The sides are marked with short 

 black and white or rusty yellow cross-bands ; the tail is reddish brown ; and the 

 lower part of the back and tail-coverts are ochre-yellow. 



Black The only salamander inhabiting the Alps is the black species 



salamander. (Salamandra atra), which measures from 4 to 6 inches in length, 

 and resembles in many respects its yellow-spotted cousin, although readily 

 distinguished by its sable livery. The distributional area of this species comprises 

 the Savoy, the north Italian, Swiss, Tyrolese, Salzburg, lower Austrian, Styrian, 

 Carinthian, Carniolan, and German Alps, as well as a few of the Alpine spurs in 

 the south of Wiirtemburg. Nocturnal in habits, and living by preference near the 

 edges of forests, this salamander comes out by day only in rainy weather, or 

 when the air is hot and dry, at other times lying hid beneath moss or stones or in 

 hollows of trees. Although during the day scarcely one of these somewhat loath- 

 some creatures may be visible, after a shower in the early morning they appear 

 as if by magic in considerable numbers. The more disagreeable the weather, the 

 livelier becomes the black salamander, although generally it seems quite sluggish. 

 Although it is not known why they become so active after rain, it is certainly not 

 in order to capture their prey, for they hurry about so quickly that they have 

 scarcely time even to seize a worm. While the young of the spotted species are 

 furnished at birth with gills and four legs, and develop in water into creatures 

 breathing by means of lungs, the young of the black kind appear in the world 

 already fitted for a life on land, having shed most of their gills. The reason of 

 this difference is that if the black species were to develop in the ordinary way, 

 the tadpoles would frequently perish by the freezing or drying up of the small 

 Alpine pools which formed their birth-place. The female produces only one or 

 two young, which live before birth thirty or forty days upon the eggs destined 

 never to come to maturity. 



Many of the fishes of central Europe are also found in the 

 Fishes. . r . . 



Alpine streams, although others are elsewhere restricted to the basin 



of the Danube, or to the rivers discharging into the Mediterranean. It is note- 

 worthy that the Lake of Geneva and the Lake of Bourget, in Savoy, both belong- 

 ing to the Mediterranean drainage-area, have each their own form of the otherwise 

 central and northern European genus Coregonus, the other fishes of their group 

 living in that area having been introduced. 



Among the Alpine insects, the beetles, especially the carnivorous 

 Beetles. . 



and running types, occupy a prominent place. These insects, being 



unable to fly, and living in great numbers in sheltered spots, seem to feed principally 



on Hying insects carried by the currents or bv rising fogs to the higher regions 



of the atmosphere, and settling with extended wings on the snow-sheet, at the edges 



of which live their enemies, whose lack of wings protects them from a similar fate. 



Butterflies The butterflies and moths of the Alps are generally smaller than 



and Moths, their relatives of the lowlands, and furnished with longer fore-wings 



adapted for flying in the attenuated mountain-air, while they are also dark in colour, 



