278 Names of Animals [FOURTH WEEK 



evolution as in its physical life. We must also admit 

 our ignorance in regard to toad, backward search revealing 

 only tade, tode, ted, toode, and tadie, the root baffling all 

 study. Pollywog and tadpole are delightfully easy. Old 

 forms of pollywog are pollywig, polewiggle, and pollwiggle. 

 This last gives us the clew to our spelling pollwiggle, 

 which, reversed and interpreted in a modern way, is wiggle- 

 head, a most appropriate name for these lively little black 

 fellows. Tadpole is somewhat similar; toad-pole, or toad's- 

 head, also very apt when we think of these small-bodied 

 larval forms. 



Salamander, which is a Greek word of Eastern origin, 

 was applied in the earliest 

 times to a lizard considered to 

 have the power of extinguish- 

 ing fire. Newt has a strange 

 history; originating in a wrong 

 division of two words, " an 

 ewte," the latter being derived 



NEWT, 



from eft, which is far more cor- 

 rect than newt, though in use now in only a few places. 



Few fishermen have ever thought of the interesting 

 derivation of the names which they know so well. Of 

 course there are a host of fishes named from a fancied 

 resemblance to familiar terrestrial animals or other things; 

 such as the catfish, and those named after the dog, hog, 

 horse, cow, trunk, devil, angel, sun, and moon. 



The word fish has passed through many varied forms 

 since it was piscis in the old Latin tongue, and the same 

 is true of shark and skate, which in the same language 



