THE SMOOTH NEWT. 181 



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 susceptibility 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 blindworm, too, which has already been 

 described, is equally irritable when separated from the body. 



The colour 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 the official catalogue of the British Museum. In this variety the upper 

 lip does not overhang the lower, and the skin is more tubercular than in the ordinary 

 examples. 



The MAEBLED NEWT (Triton Marmordtus) is a continental species, and is found 

 plentifully 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 odour 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 colour of the Marbled Newt is 

 olive-brown above, marbled with grey and dotted with white on the back. The head is 

 grey, 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 cresto.d 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 in Wiltshire, I was 

 told some very odd stories about this Newt, and my own powers of handling these terrible 

 creatures without 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 farmyard, 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 man on his thumb as he was cutting grass in the churchyard, and inflicted 

 great damage on that member. 



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 the water, fastened on her arm, bit out a piece of flesh, and spat fire into the wound, 

 so that she afterwards lost her arm. , 



All the Newts possess singular powers of reproducing lost or injured members, this 

 faculty proving them to hold a rather low place in the scale of creation. The Smooth 

 Newt has been known to reproduce the tail, and even the limbs ; and in one case an eye 

 was removed entirely, and reproduced in a perfect state by the end of the year. 



This species may be known by its smooth and non-tubercular skin, and its small size. 

 During the breeding season the male wears a crest, which runs continuously from the 

 bad to the end of the tail, and is not so deeply cleft as that of the crested species. 



