78 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. [ 3 d Ser, 



permitted to escape, they die, apparently of drowning, in 

 the course of a few hours. 



I have tested this many times and in both ways; i. e., by 

 arranging an aquarium so that transforming larva; could 

 not get out of the water at all, and also by putting into such 

 aquaria recently transformed individuals found on land; 

 and the results have been invariably the same. Particularly 

 those captured on land and put into water seem to drown, 

 for, if placed in an aquarium over night for example, in 

 the morning they are found dead, their mouths open and 

 bodies much enlarged. They appear to have imbibed water 

 over the entire surface of the body. 



Furthermore, I have frequently noticed that strictly land- 

 dwelling individuals of larger size, as they are often found 

 late in the summer, seem to have a genuine aversion to 

 water. As an illustration of this, one day in the early fall 

 of last year while searching through one of our canons 

 from which the water had disappeared excepting for an 

 occasional shallow pool, I found many specimens of me- 

 dium sized adults, all with skins at the extreme of papilla- 

 tion, and tails as nearly Unless and round as they ever be- 

 come. Although water was easily accessible to them all, 

 not a single individual of the dozens seen, as I remember, 

 was in it. In one instance a specimen in making an un- 

 usual effort to escape me ran close along the side of a pool 

 where the rocks in his course became so sheer as to make 

 it more and more difficult for him to cling to them, and 

 letting go meant an inevitable fall into the water. Against 

 this the animal struggled with great desperation, and when 

 at last the catastrophe came, no drowning human being ever 

 made more frantic efforts to escape than did this unfortu- 

 nate "water dog." It could hardly have been fear of 

 the fall that made him cling so tenaciously to the rocks, for 

 ordinarily the creatures are quite heedless of a tumble from 

 much greater heights than this. 



Instances of the apparent dread of water by specimens 

 of this size, form, and habit, one sees frequently. The 

 contrast between this and the most complete aquatic habit 



