NEWT.—HOUSE FLIES. 
399 
digestion. When these newts steal from their ponds 
they invariably, I think, keep to damp places, as 
those which I have kept, always lingered away 
their existence when I suffered them to crawl over 
the floor of the room, and as a last resource instinct 
would direct them to draw close together, so that 
they might retain all the moisture of their skins yet 
remaining, and thus confer mutual benefit on one 
another. Unless left too long, a damp cloth would 
reanimate their enfeebled and stiffened bodies. 
Newts feed much on earthworms, and perhaps this 
food is what causes their rambles on the land. 
Houseflies linger on till very late in the year, 
when frosts destroy all that have not laid them¬ 
selves up in a hybernating state. Warm days 
greatly reanimate the species and recal many that 
had become torpid in hedges, to activity; on warm 
banks we may see them in numbers enjoying the 
short noon-day gleams of sunshine, and regaling 
on some favorite liquid, or other substance which 
they find on the berries of the ivy. About October, 
the first symptoms of declining strength are mani¬ 
fested with them, a few days of cold enervate their 
constitutions and call them to their winter’s sleep, 
or to the consummation of their lives. Numbers 
now crawl feebly on the floors and windows, and 
are touched and captured without tokens of alarm; 
some prompted by the hybernating instinct seek in 
the most extraordinary way to conceal themselves 
in crevices and inaccessible crannies where the tem¬ 
perature is favorable to protracted life, but as they 
commonly seek very dark recesses, the difficulty of 
emerging on the return of spring one would think 
must be particularly great. Many at once betake 
themselves to beds and creep between the coverings, 
conscious no doubt of the advantageous warmth. 
In short, the instincts of all hybernating creatures at 
the period of taking on their torpid condition is 
