THE SMOOTH NEWT. j8i 



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 blind- 

 worm, too, which has already been described, is equally irritable when separated from 

 the body. 



The color 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 MARBLED 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 odor 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 color of the Marbled Newt is 

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

 is gray, 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 crested 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 farmyard 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 church- 

 yard, 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 

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



