REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I918 255 



Specimens recorded by Moesel from hillsides near Ithaca, " were 

 taken from beneath large, flat stones which were well imbedded and 

 surrounded by a mass of shrubbery." Others, as before noted, 

 were found buried to a depth of 6 or 7 inches. 



A few specimens have been taken in situations less terrestrial. In 

 his account of the Batrachia and Reptilia of Onondaga county, 

 Britcher ('03) includes a single specimen taken in sphagnum moss in 

 a swamp on the Jamesville road. I am indebted to Mrs A. A. Wright 

 of Ithaca for a similar record. On June 11, 19 16, while searching 

 for a small orchid, Listera australis, Mrs Wright found a 

 specimen in the sphagnum of the Duck Lake bogs, about 7 miles 

 north of Savannah, N. Y. 



The base of Larch hill, above mentioned, is bordered on the west 

 by a broad meadow formerly with large areas of sphagnum but 

 now being fast converted by ditching operations into land suitable 

 for cultivation. On June 16, 1919, Dr A. H. Wright and the writer 

 visited this locality but a thorough search failed to reveal a single 

 specimen of the four-toed salamander. Although few specimens had 

 been actually recorded from sphagnum bogs, the intimate association 

 of the species with this type of environment was pointed out by 

 Wright ('18) who stated, "The four-toed salamander (Hemi- 

 dactylium scutatu m) ... is vanishing with the drying 

 up or draining of sphagnum bogs and feather bed swamps." It 

 is certain that the final conversion of sphagniun areas will mark the 

 extirpation of the species in such localities, unless in their progressive 

 adaptation to terrestrial life, they select more varied situations for 

 deposit of eggs. 



General Habits 



The habit of coiling up when disturbed or exposed was observed 

 by Sherwood (ibid) and independently by A. H. Wright, who 

 expressed the opinion that the habit was perhaps correlated in some 

 way with the attendance of the female upon the eggs; a conjecture 

 verified to some extent by subsequent observations. Two habits 

 of Plethodon cinereus, leaping and autotomy of the 

 tail, described by Piersol ('09) as of rare occurrence among Urodeles, 

 have both been observed in Hemidactylium. The leaping process 

 in the latter, however, seems to be accomplished more by violent 

 contortions of the body and tail than by use of the limbs. 



Although several individuals were taken in the field with tails 

 in various stages of regeneration, the inclination to part with this 



