1 8 Woodside. 



notice, swimming towards us, a prettily-spotted newt with- 

 out the brilliant colours ? That is the lady newt, and she is 

 evidently busy searching for suitable places in which to lay 

 her eggs. Watch her as she chooses the long leaf of some 

 water plant, or the broad leaf of a piece of grass near the 

 edge, and fastens to it a roundish egg by means of the sticky 

 gelatinous matter with which it is covered. Yes ; there is 

 the egg ! But what is she doing now ? She is carefully 

 rolling up the leaf, on which the egg is deposited, until the 

 latter is quite shut in, and then you see she gums the edges 

 of the leaf together, and is off to lay another. What a 

 wonderful provision of nature is this which enables the 

 newt thus to protect and preserve her eggs from the many 

 hungry creatures that aboiand in our ponds. 



But the newt does not lay all her eggs at once. It takes 

 a considerable time for her to complete the process, and 

 hence, if we search keenly, we may probably find some 

 young newts already hatched. Yes, here they are ! Those 

 tiny, black, tadpole-looking objects young newts? Certainly. 

 The yolk of the newt's egg divides and sub-divides into a 

 multitude of cells ; from these the young one is built up, 

 and when the egg hatches, this tiny little tadpole-looking 

 creature is the result. It is very much like the young of 

 the frog, and lives under water like a fish, breathing by 

 means of gills. 



I have not time to-day to tell you all about the respiratory 

 apparatus, and the changes which it undergoes when the 

 newt-tadpole becomes a newt. Very likely, in the course of 

 our rambles together, we shall come across a toad, which 

 very much resembles the newt in this respect, and we can 

 go into the matter then. 



