178 ADVENTURE WITH A SALAMANDER. 



When they calmed down into a mild sample of hysterics, they began to explain that 

 I had brought home the most venomous animal in creation. 



' Oh ! le rildin bete ! ' cried Phyllis. 



' Oh ! le mechant /' chimed in Abigail ; 'he kills everybody that comes near him ; I 

 have known fifty people die of his bite, and no remedy in the world can save them. As 

 soon as they are bitten they gonflent, gonflent, and keep on swelling till they burst, and 

 are dead in a quarter of an hour.' 



Here I transferred my curiosity from the basket to a glass jar, and put a saucer on 

 the top to keep it safe. 



' Oh ! Monsieur, don't leave him so ; if he puts himself in a rage, nothing can hold 

 him. He has got such force that he can jump up to the ceiling ; and wherever he 

 fastens himself he sticks like death.' 



'Ah ! it's all true,' cried my landlady, joining the circle of gapers ; ' Oh! la, la ! fa 

 mcfait peur ; (a mefaittr-r-r-r-emblerJ' 



' Once I saw a man in a haycart try to kill one, and the bete jumped right off the 

 ground at a bound and fastened itself on the man's face, when he stood on the haycart 

 and nothing could detach it till the man fell dead.' 



' Ah ! c'est bien vrai,' cried Abigail ; ' they ought to have fetched a mirror and held 

 it up to the bete, and then it would have left the man and jumped at its image? 



The end of all this commotion was that, while I went to inquire of a scientific friend 

 whether there was any truth in these tissue of betises, the whole household was in an 

 uproar, tout en emoi, and they sent for a commissionnaire?^^. an ostler with a spade and 

 mattock, and threw out my poor bete into the road, and foully murdered it, chopping it 

 into a dozen pieces by the light of a stable lantern ; and then they declared that they 

 could sleep in peace ! les miserables ! 



But there were sundry misgivings as to my fate, and as with the Apostle, ' they 

 looked when I should have swollen or fallen down dead suddenly ; ' and next morning 

 the maids came stealthily and peeped into my room to see whether I was alive or dead, 

 and were not a little surprised that I was not even gonfle, or any the worse for my 

 rencontre with a sourd. 



And so it turned out that my poor little bete that had caused such a disturbance was 

 nothing more nor less than a Salamander a poor, inoffensive, harmless reptile, declared 

 on competent authority to be noways venomous ; but whose unfortunate appearance 

 and somewhat Satanic livery have exposed it to obloquy and persecution." 



This notion of the poisonous character of the Salamander is of very old date, as the 

 reader may see by referring to any ancient work on Natural History. One of the old 

 writers advises any one who is bitten by a Salamander to betake himself to the coffin 

 and winding-sheet, and remarks that^ a sufferer from the bite of this animal needs as 

 many physicians as the Salamander has spots. If the Salamander crawled upon the 

 stem of an apple-tree, all the crop of fruit was supposed to be withered by its deadly 

 presence, and if the heel of a man should come in contact with the liquid that exudes 

 from the skin, all the hair of his head and face would fall off. 



There is certainly an infinitesimally minute atom of truth in all this mass of 

 absurdities, for the Salamander does secrete a liquid from certain pores in its surface, 

 which, for the moment, would enable it to pass through a moderate fire, and this 

 secretion is sufficiently acrid to affect the eyes painfully, and to injure small animals 

 if taken into the mouth. 



The Salamander is a terrestrial species, only frequenting the water for the purpose of 

 depositing its young, which leave the egg before they enter into independent existence. 

 It is a slow and timid animal, generally hiding itself in some convenient crevice during 

 the day, and seldom venturing out except at night or in rainy weather. It feeds on 

 slugs, insects, and similar creatures. During the cold months it retires into winter 

 quarters, generally the hollow of some decaying tree, or beneath mossy stones, and 

 does not reappear until the spring. 



The ground color of this species is black, and the spots are light yellow. Along 

 the sides are scattered numerous small tubercles. 



