388 DAN BEARD'S ANIMAL BOOK 



habits to that of a land animal. But I did succeed 

 in making some interesting sketches of one of these 

 creatures in the act of removing its skin, which are 

 here reproduced. The sketches were very rapidly 

 drawn, but are perfectly accurate as far as the pose 

 and action of the creature is concerned. Fig. i 

 shows a newt with 



THE SKIN ROLLED BACK FROM ITS HEAD 



over its arms pinioning them to its side. This was 

 as I first discovered it ; by a series of wriggling mo- 

 tions the creature squirmed out of its skin until 

 the arms were free, and the fold of skin bound its 

 waist like a tight belt, as shown in Fig. 2. 



STILL SQUIRMING 



and writhing the slippery little body worked its 

 way out of its tight-fitting clothes until it had 

 rolled its shirt, so to speak, back over its legs as 

 may be seen as shown by Fig. 3. The hardest 

 part of the work was now over; it seemed an easy 

 matter for it to work its skin down to its tail, and 

 then a funny thing happened; the little animal bent 

 itself in a circle, as shown by Fig. 4, took the old 

 skin in its mouth and pulled it off from the end of 

 its tail, wrong side outwards, of course, just as 

 you would pull the finger of a kid glove from your 

 own finger, Fig. 5. I was interested to know what 

 it was going to do with its old suit of clothes; 

 whether It would donate them to some aquatic 



