Reptiles and Batrachians of the Edinburgh District. 515 
were abundant, I was amused, on lifting my net out of the 
water, to see one clinging firmly to a knot which had been 
made on the end of it to cover a tear. So firmly did he 
cling that he allowed himself to be dangled in the air a con- 
siderable time before letting go his hold, and no sooner was 
the net replaced in the water than he swam up and clasped 
it again. 
The lengths (snout to vent) of a few breeding specimens 
are as follows :— 
Male, 64 mm. Female, 73 mm. 
2? 62 ) ” 71 9 
» 61 ,, » 69 4, 
Our Toads, however, appear to be small indeed as com- 
pared with Continental examples. Fatio mentions one (a 
female from Sicily) which had attained the enormous length of 
153 mm. His averages are—male 80 mm., female 100 mm. 
The length of a large specimen, according to Bell, is 3 inches 
5 lines=87 mm. 
Order CAUDATA. 
MOLGE CRISTATA (Laur.). Warty NEwrT. 
In former days, when sedge-girt pools and marshes 
abounded in the district, Newts, or Asks, as all the species 
are here popularly called,! would in all probability be more 
numerous than now; and but for the construction of artificial 
ponds, quarries, etc., which has provided them with many 
fresh habitats in place of the old ones destroyed by drainage 
—they would doubtless have been much less common at the 
present day than they are. From Stark’s “Picture of Edin- 
burgh,” sixth edition, 1834, we learn that “several species” 
were then to be found in ditches in the Queen’s Park; but I 
fear they have, like the ditches, long ago disappeared; nor 
have I been able to find any in the lochs in the park, 
although I am told they have been seen in Duddingston 
within comparatively recent years. Lochend has also been 
searched in vain; and now that the greater part of the Braid 
1 The Lizard also goes by the name of Ask. 
