24 Notes on the Life-history of the Common Newt. (January, 
with saturated moss, they changed their color from a bright ver- 
milion to the olive state characteristic of the D. viridescens,” and 
he kept them all winter. 
I have gradually come to the conclusion that the two are iden- 
tical. Some years ago I captured quite a number of red ones in 
the Catskill mountains, brought them home and kept them ina 
box with other salamanders, where they could resort to water if 
they chose. For some days they remained hiding under the 
wet moss and stones, but finally crept out at night and went into 
the water. I gave them insects and worms, which they readily 
devoured. In about three months they lost their bright red, and 
in less than a year they were of the usual olive of the viri- 
descens. — 
Another fact still more decidedly bearing on the case, is, that 
some two year old olive-colored viridescens taken from the ponds 
and put in earth and dead, wet leaves in a tub in my garden with- 
out water, in a month or so began to lose their green tint and 
assume a dingy brownish hue. 
It is well known that the Diemyctylus often stays away from 
water for months at a time, but roams round at night in the damp 
earth and grass in wet weather. 
The food these animals take plays also a very important part 
in their coloration and growth, just as we see in the whole animal 
kingdom. In the ponds the viridescens is generally a dull olive, 
almost the color of the green slime and plants covering them, in 
which they hide almost unseen. On land, where they are always 
in the day time, either under stones or dead wood or in the earth 
they have burrowed in, they assume more the color of these ob- 
jects to hide from whatever enemies they may have in their new 
habitat. 
Then as to food; in the water they have abundance of succu- 
lent nutriment — mollusks, tadpoles, ova of reptiles and fish, _ 
aquatic insects and plenty of confervaceous plants on which they — 
and their prey alike feed, and which doubtless assists in their col- 
oration. Now as soon as they leave the water their food changes _ 
at once to spiders, insects, earthworms, &c., so totally different — 
from the prey of the ponds, and it is most probable this is the 
first cause in the change of color in the little Diemyctylus. 
Locality has also considerable to do with the tints of the skin — 
in these animals, as we see so prominently in snakes, especially — 
eee tear 
we 
