1925] Storer: A Synopsis of the Amphibia of California 
65 
differed from all known eggs of California amphibia. Upon being 
taken to the laboratory and hatched, these gave larvae which proved 
to be those of Ambystoma calif or niense. 
The ponds in which these eggs were found, and those in which 
larvae were collected in 1922 and 1923, were all of the same general 
type, small pools two acres or less in surface extent, formed in the 
lowest parts of small drainage basins in the extreme western foothills 
of the Sierra Nevada. All of these pools are probably ephemeral, as 
is known to be the case with the Bellota pool, being formed by January 
or earlier in winters of normal rainfall and becoming dry by early 
summer. Adjacent to all of the ponds studied there were ground 
squirrel burrows which the adult salamanders might use as daytime 
refuges throughout the year, and at the pool two miles west of Wallace 
there were two rocky outcrops in the interstices of which many sala- 
manders could have found safe retreats. 
The water in the ponds west of Wallace was at no place more than 
150 millimeters in depth ; eggs were found at depths of from 25 to 
75 millimeters (estimated), attached to grass stems or stalks of dead 
weeds under the water surface. The eggs were for the most part 
deposited singly, though a few doubles and two groups each of three 
and of four eggs were collected. That this is the regular manner of 
deposition is indicated by the finding of eggs in two pools, two miles 
apart, deposited in exactly the same manner. 
The outermost jelly coat of the eggs is very soft and evidently 
viscid at the time of extrusion, since practically all the eggs collected 
were covered with fine sediment stirred up from the bottom of the 
pools. This brownish covering tends to obscure the eggs from view 
above so that careful searching is necessary to discover them. Most 
of the eggs seen were in an advanced state of development, with well 
formed embryos bearing gills in which the blood circulation was 
established. Some of these hatched out in the laboratory on February 
17 and the others in the next two or three days. A smaller number 
had been laid at a later date than the first lot, as the embryos in them 
were just beginning to elongate on February 15. These hatched in 
the laboratory on February 28. The eggs of the two age-groups were 
intermingled. In laying, the females evidently move about much 
more than is the case with Triturws torosus or with any of the common 
Salientia. It appeared that the eggs of at least three females were 
represented in those found in the pond two miles west of Wallace. 
