land, concealing themselves under stones, logs of wood, or in holes in damp earth, but leaving their retreat at night or in wet weather to search for earth-worms and slugs which constitute their principal food. In the water they are very destructive of tadpoles, insect larvae and crustaceans.
A remarkable feature of the newts, which they share with the other tailed Batrachians and the larvae of the frogs and toads, is the great facility with which they regenerate, lost parts, such as the tail, limbs, and even the eye, a faculty which has given rise to a great variety of experiments, from the days of Charles Bonnet and Spallanzani to those of the present school of Entwickelungsmechanik.
Extraordinary as it may appear, considering the abundance of these creatures and the attention they have received from naturalists, it was only in 1880 that their mode of fecundation was correctly ascertained from observation of the common newt by the Italian zoologist F. Gasco. The amorous games of the newts, so graphically. represented by M. Rusconi, had been repeatedly described, and Abbé Spallanzani, as early as 1766, had ascertained the impregnation to be internal. The then current belief that the water served as a vehicle to convey the spermatozoa to the female organs had received a blow on Karl Theodor von Siebold’s discovery of a receptaculum seminis in the female, but no satisfactory explanation had been given of the manner in which the spermatozoa, reach these pouches. This mystery Gasco succeeded in elucidating in his masterly paper published in 1880, which has since been supplemented by his own investigations on the axolotl, and those of E. Zeller, E. O. Jordan and others on the European and American newts.
All who have kept newts in an aquarium have witnessed the curious antics of the male placing himself before the female and rapidly vibrating his folded tail, or bending his body in a semicircle, as if to prevent her from passing ahead of him. The male then emits, at short intervals, in front of the female, several conical or bell-shaped spermatophores (a gelatinous secretion from the cloaca), adhering to the ground and crowned by a spherical mass of spermatozoa, which the female afterwards gathers in the lips of her cloaca either by mere application or by holding the spermatophore between her hind legs and pressing, the mass of spermatozoa into the cloaca, whence they ultimately find their way into the lower part of the oviducts, where the eggs are fecundated as they descend.
The larvae are provided with three pairs of long, fringed, plume-like external gills, which are not lost until the very last stages of the metamorphosis, and, in exceptional cases are even retained throughout life, the newt breeding in the branchiate condition, as often happens in the axolotl. The fore limbs are developed before the hind limbs.
The genus Molge has a wide distribution, extending over Europe, north-west Africa, south-western Asia, eastern temperate Asia; (China and Japan) and North America as far south as southern California and the Rio Grande del Norte. Twenty species are distinguished. The British species are the crested newt (M. cristata), the common newt (M. vulgaris) and the palmated newt (M. palmata). The first is the largest, and measures 4 to 6 in. The skin is more or less rugose, with granular warts, a strong fold extends across the throat, and the male is provided with a very high dentate dorsal crest which is interrupted over the sacral region; the upper parts are dark, with more or less distinct black spots; the sides are speckled with white, and the lower parts are yellow or orange, spotted or marbled with black; a silvery stripe adorns the side of the tail in the male. The common and the palmated newts are smaller, 212 to 4 in. in length, and have a smooth skin. The dorsal crest of the male is high and festooned in the former, low and straight-edged in the latter; during the breeding season the feet of the common newt are lobate like a grebe’s, whilst they are webbed like a duck’s in the palmated newt, which is further distinguished in having the tail truncate and terminating in a filament.
It is a remarkable fact that, although related so closely and occurring so frequently together in pools of small extent, the common and palmated newts are not known ever to produce hybrids, whilst the crested newt, when coexisting (in some parts of France) with a south-western ally, the beautiful Molge marmorata, to which it is by no means more nearly akin than are the two above-named species to each other, regularly gives rise to the form known as M. blasii, which has been proved to be a cross between M. cristata and M. marmorata.
Principal references: G. A. Boulenger, Catalogue of Batrachia Gradientia s. Caudata (1882); J. de Bedriaga, Lurchfauna Europas, II. Urodela (1897); F. Gasco, “Sviluppo del Tritone alpestre,” Ann. Mus. Geneva, xvi. (1880); E. Zeller, “Befruchtung, bei den Urodelen,” Z. Wiss. Zool. xlix. (1890) and li. (1891); M. Rusconi, Amours des Salamandres aquatiques (1821); W. Wolterstorff, “Über Triton blasii,” Zool. Jahrb., Syst., xix. p. 647 (1904).
NEWTON, ALFRED (1829–1907), English zoologist, was born
at Geneva on the 11th of June 1829. In 1854 he was elected
travelling fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, of which he
had been an undergraduate, and subsequently visited many parts
of the world, including Lapland, Iceland, Spitsbergen, the West
Indies and North America. In 1866 he became the first professor
of zoology and comparative anatomy at Cambridge, a position
which he retained till his death. His services to ornithology and
zoogeography were recognized by the Royal Society in 1900,
when it awarded him a Royal medal. He wrote many books,
including Zoology of Ancient Europe (1862), Ootheca Wolleyana
(begun in 1864), Zoology (1872), and a Dictionary of Birds (1893–1896).
The last, still a standard work, was an amplification of
the numerous articles on birds which he contributed to the 9th
edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and which with comparatively
slight revision are retained in the present edition. He
contributed many memoirs to scientific societies, and edited The
Ibis (1865–1870), the Zoological Record (1870–1872), and Yarrell’s
British Birds (1871–1882). He died at Cambridge on the 7th of
June 1907.
NEWTON, SIR CHARLES THOMAS (1816–1894), British
archaeologist, was born on the 16th of September 1816, at
Bredwardine in Herefordshire, and educated at Shrewsbury
School and Christ Church, Oxford. He entered the British
Museum in 1840 as an assistant in the Antiquities Department.
Antiquities, classical, Oriental and medieval, as well as ethnographical
objects, were at the time included in one department,
which had no classical archaeologist among its officers. In
1852 Newton quitted the Museum to become vice-consul at
Mitylene, with the object of exploring the coasts and islands
of Asia Minor. Aided by funds supplied by Lord Stratford de
Redcliffe, then British ambassador at Constantinople, he made
in 1852 and 1855 important discoveries of inscriptions at the
island of Calymnos, off the coast of Caria; and in 1856–1857
achieved the great archaeological exploit of his life by the
discovery of the remains of the mausoleum of Halicarnassus,
one of the “seven wonders” of the ancient world. He was
greatly assisted by Murdoch Smith, afterwards celebrated in
connexion with Persian telegraphs. The results were described
by Newton in his History of Discoveries at Halicarnassus (1862–1863),
written in conjunction with R. P. Pullan, and in his
Travels and Discoveries in the Levant (1865). These works
included particulars of other important discoveries, especially
at Branchidae, where he disinterred the statues which had
anciently lined the Sacred Way, and at Cnidos, where R. P.
Pullan, acting under his direction, found the colossal lion now
in the British Museum.
In 1855 Newton declined the regius professorship of Greek at Oxford. In 1860 he was made British consul at Rome, but had scarcely entered upon the post when an opportunity presented itself of reorganizing the amorphous department of antiquities at the British Museum, which was divided into three and ultimately four branches. The Greek and Roman section naturally fell to Newton, who returned as Keeper, and held the office until 1885, declining the offer of the principal librarianship made to him in 1878. The Mausoleum Room, to accommodate the treasures he had found in Asia Minor, was built under his supervision, but the most brilliant episode of his administration was the acquisition of the Blacas and Castellani gems and sculptures. The Farnese and Pourtalès collections were also acquired by him. He took a leading part in the foundation of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, the British School at Athens, and the Egypt Exploration Fund. He was Yates professor of classical archaeology at University College, London, from 1880 to 1888. His collected essays on Art and Archaeology were published in 1886. When, on his retirement from the Museum, his bust by Boehm, now placed in one of the sculpture galleries, was presented to him as a testimonial, he desired the unexpended balance to be given to the school at Athens. After his retirement he was much occupied with the publication of the Greek inscriptions in the British Museum, but his health failed greatly in the latter years of his life. He died at Margate on the 28th of November 1894. He married in 1861 the daughter of his successor in the consulate at Rome, the painter Severn, herself a distinguished artist. She died in 1866. (R. G.)
