CONCERNING TADPOLES 201 



The young of the newts and salamanders are never so 

 completely abandoned to fate as are so many of the frog- 

 tribe ; and it is significant to notice that the number of 

 eggs produced at a time is rarely very large. Even where 

 least care is bestowed the eggs are either attached singly or 

 in small groups to stones or weeds ; generally, as in 

 the case of the common newt, the female folds one or two 

 leaves over the eggs as they are laid, thus recalling the 

 curious practice of the tree-frogs of the genus Phyllomedusa. 

 Keyserling's Salamander, a Siberian species, deposits its 

 eggs, to the number of fifty or sixty, in a sausage-shaped 

 bag, attaching it to the water-weeds near the surface of 

 the water. The larvae in due course hatch and escape 

 from the nursery into the water in a limbless condition, 

 and breathing by external gills. 



The Giant Salamander of China and Japan, a huge 

 creature measuring over five feet in length, lays its eggs, 

 to the number of five hundred, in clumps, each egg being 

 attached to its neighbour by a short thread. A male in 

 the Zoological Gardens of Amsterdam kept guard over 

 such a mass of eggs for no less than ten weeks, every now 

 and then crawling among the eggs and lifting them up, 

 apparently for the purpose of aerating them. 



Many young of the salamander tribe, like many species of 

 young frogs, have their nurseries ashore, in which case they 

 undergo more or less of the larval stages of growth within 

 the egg — that is to say hatching does not take place till 

 the larval gills have been absorbed. As a case in point we 

 may cite the grey plethodon of North America, which lays 

 her eggs in small packages of about five in number, be- 

 neath stones, then curls her body round them till they 

 hatch : an event which does not take place until after the 

 larval stage has been passed — that is to say the external 



