Water, in a state of rest over decayed and putrescent vegetable matter, is peculiarly favorable for the residence of many of the insect world. The eggs that are lodged there remain undisturbed by the agitation of the element, and the young produced from them, or deposited there by viviparous creatures, remain in quiet, tolerably secure from accidental injuries; but there are natural causes which render these apparent asylums the fields of ravenousness and of death. To these places resort many of those voracious insects and other creatures, which prey upon the smaller and helpless; for all created things seem subordinate to some more powerful or irresistible agent, from the hardly visible atom that floats in the pool, to man, who claims and commands the earth as his own. But we have no animal that seems to commit greater destruction in these places than the common newt (lacertus aquaticus). In some of these well-stored magazines this reptile will grow to a large size, and become unusually warty, and bloated with repletion; feeding and fattening upon the unresisting beings that abound in those dark waters wherein it loves to reside. It will take a worm from the hook of those that angle in ponds; and in some places I have seen the boys in the spring of the year draw it up by their fishing-lines, a very extraordinary figure, having a small shell-fish (tellina cornea) attached to one or all of its feet; the toes of the newt having been accidentally introduced into the gaping shell, in its progress on the mud at the bottom of the pool, or designedly put in for the purpose of seizure, when the animal inhabitant closed the valves and entrapped the toes. But from whatever causes these shells became fixed, when the animal is drawn up hanging and wriggling with its toes fettered all round, it affords a very unusual and strange appearance.