LESSON XXXIII.
THE SALAMANDERS.
“The rarest things with wayward willBeneath the covert hide them still;The rarest things to break of dayLook shortly forth, and hie away.”
“The rarest things with wayward willBeneath the covert hide them still;The rarest things to break of dayLook shortly forth, and hie away.”
“The rarest things with wayward willBeneath the covert hide them still;The rarest things to break of dayLook shortly forth, and hie away.”
“The rarest things with wayward will
Beneath the covert hide them still;
The rarest things to break of day
Look shortly forth, and hie away.”
—Joanna Baillie.
Frogs and toads belong to the class Batrachia, a division of vertebrates which stands intermediate between fishes and reptiles, partaking in the different stages of their lives of some of the characteristics of both these classes. The eggs of batrachians are generally laid in water or damp places, and the young breathe, not through lungs but through gills. To the class Batrachia belong not only frogs and toads, but sirens, mud-fish, “water-dogs,” and salamanders, all of which areinteresting animals. Among them there is a species of salamander which is distinguished from all other batrachians, because its young ones are born alive.
I remember reading when I was a child, of a very remarkable beast called a salamander, which could live in fire; and one of my books had a thrilling description of one of these little animals which had come forth from a burning log in the midst of a blaze, and ran cheerfully about in the flames, sporting and enjoying itself. This myth of the superiority of the salamander to fire is wide-spread and ancient. It is a common saying that a person who is not easily affected by heat is “a perfect salamander.” The stories of some old-time naturalists about the salamanders are amusing. We are told that the creature can not only live in fire, but is born in it; that passing through a fire it extinguishes it; that smiths finding the forge fires going out, always knew that a salamander was playing therein, and mended the fire by killing the animal. Another myth was that the salamander was the most poisonous of all creatures; if it crawled over a person’s foot that person’s entire body was poisoned, the hair fell out, and lingering death was the result; wood, over which a salamander had crept was poisonous; the creature’s breath was a deadly poison. Some thought the animal wore hair, others that it wore feathers or fur, but all agreed that cloth woven of its coat was fire-proof. Belief in these fantastic stories long survived.
What is the truth? The salamander is not at all poisonous; on the contrary, like most other batrachians, it is harmless and helpless, and obtains its bad name no doubt from itsgeneral lack of beauty, of either shape or color. It is ugly and therefore venomous, is the reasoning. This is hard. What if we should reason that a person is unhandsome and therefore vicious? The skin of the salamander is glandular, and is capable of secreting much fluid, and when the creature is terrified or excited this secretion increases, and the fluid covers the skin. Owing to this fluid, a salamander which by any means finds itself in a fire, might move about for a minute or two looking for an exit from the flames, and get out scatheless, thanks to its watery coat. Besides, these cold-blooded animals are to a certain extent insensitive upon the surface of the body, and would suffer little pain in a brief sojourn in a flame. The stories of salamanders suddenly appearing in a fire as if born there, can be explained by the fact that they hide and sleep in decayed logs, under stones, or among dry, dead sticks, and so might be very likely to wake up in a fire kindled out of doors.
The largest of all the salamanders belongs in Asia, and is found in Thibet and Japan. It is the largest of the batrachians, and is about three feet in length. I once saw perhaps the largest specimen ever found, the giant of salamanders. It was two feet, five inches high, from its soles to the top of the arch of its back, and three feet, five inches long from nose to tail tip. Its color was a rusty black, and its skin was covered with thick knobs or granulations, making it look as if dressed in very hard and old embossed leather armor.
The head of the salamander is large and rounded; the tail is stiff and elongated; the legs very short; the hind feetare five-toed, the front feet have only four toes. The legs and feet are thick and clumsy, and the larger salamanders are heavy and inert in their motions. Far from finding fire their native or preferred element, the salamanders like cold, damp places; their eggs are dropped in water and hatch there, except those of the spotted salamander of Spain.
The young of these Spanish salamanders are at birth about half or three quarters of an inch long, with branched gills. They look like tadpoles or “pollywogs,” and at once take to the water and remain there until they reach the adult form. The salamander larvæ grow to considerable size before they make their final change of form. Their gills are very large, and as they swim about they look as if they had trimmed their necks with foliage. In the water they find themselves very comfortable until they approach the adult period. Then they become restless and dig holes for themselves in the mud or sand of the streams or ponds where they live. These lairs exactly fit their bodies, and are so placed that as they lie there with their heads out of water every slight rise or ripple of the water will overflow them and keep the lairs well wet. Thus they breathe in the water by their gills, and at the same time practice air-breathing; for their gills are now shrivelling away, and they are progressing toward the air-breathing condition of the true salamander state.
A salamander much like the spotted one, but having no lighter spots on its skin, lives in high lands where there are no stagnant waters fit for a resting-place for its eggs. This black salamander’s young ones are born two at a time, and are in all respects except size, precisely like their parents.
The ash-colored salamander is common in the woods of the Eastern United States. It is only a few inches long, but is not so small as its cousin the “microscopic salamander,” a native of the Mississippi Valley, a lithe, brisk little creature, of a gray color, fond of hiding in logs and under bark or stones. Black, gray and dust-color are the usual shades of a salamander’s coat, but in the Rocky Mountains some may be found adorned with red, yellow, and green spots and stripes.
A very common variety in the United States is the red-banded salamander, distinguished not only for the red band down his back, but for his activity in climbing. Shut him in a room and he darts up the wall lightly as a sailor goes up a mast. Put him in a glass case, he runs up the glass with the ease of a fly, and hangs from the plate at the top back downward, moving his dumpy head from side to side. You almost fancy a grin on his wide mouth, and a leer in his bright, black eyes, as if he said, “How does this strike you?” The secret of these feats is, that he can adhere to smooth surfaces by means of a moisture diffused over the lower part of his body and the soles of his feet.
The red-banded salamander may sometimes be found in the woods lying coiled on the tip of a branch or a large fern frond, the red line on his back showing like a coil of scarlet ribbon. If he is alarmed this coil snaps out straight, and by that motion he has cast himself several feet distant, and is gone among the grass. Commend us to a red-banded salamander or a wood-toad for a sudden and effective jump. Nothing is more curious than to see this dainty little red-bandedbeast climbing up a rush, or a long, stiff spear of grass, or the graceful, plumed stalk of a golden-rod.
The very prettiest of all the salamanders is found in the red-wood forests of California; it is of a vivid salmon-color and has very prominent, bright eyes. Salamanders are found from Mexico to Siberia, and in general it may be stated that those of the warm latitudes are smaller, more active, and more gaily colored; those of colder climates are larger, duller, dark colored, and very slow in motion. In the British Islands there are no salamanders.
The red-woods of California belong to a very ancient class of tree-vegetation: the salamanders are of an ancient class of living things. I have sometimes wondered looking at one of those little, brilliant, salmon-hued salamanders, with its staring bright eyes that see everything, whether it has received by tradition from its elders, tales of a time when intrusive mammals with man at their head were unknown, and they and the red-woods had their world to themselves.