152
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
place; and yet it is not at all rare to see two or more separate
colonies in quite small ponds. At Birch Hall, the toads, while
preferring the big reed beds, threaded their egg masses in all
parts of the lake near the banks.
At Theydon Bois the exodus of the young frogs took place
in June, when it never seemed to me a very striking phenomenon,
and young toads are seen on land at the same time; but, after
the first heavy shower about mid-July (the 20th in 1915 and 1918,
I note) young toads no bigger than bluebottles swarm every-
where in astonishing numbers. At such times the people can
hardly be convinced that the little animals have not been rained
down from the sky. In a few days these swarming hordes have
disappeared.
6.—NEWTS.
It is difficult to understand how so many observations on Essex
newts escaped my note book. For example, I cannot find any
mention of the palmated newt,1 which is certainly common
in some areas at least. Near Theydon, in winter, I used to
find both the great warty and the smooth newts hibernating
either under damp logs or deep in ponds. In captivity, smooth
newts may live for many months, right through the winter,
without being seen anywhere except deep in the water of the
tank. A Forest common newt with a double tail lived with me
for nearly a year; and a great warty newt from the same local-
ity had, I noticed, the second toe duplicated on the left hind foot.
THE BRITISH YELLOW WAGTAILS.
By GULIELMA LISTER, F.L S.
OUR common yellow wagtail is a regular summer visitor
to the British Isles, and is distributed over the greater
part of England from April to early September. In Essex it
nests abundantly in low meadows and marsh land near the
coast. Outside England it is comparatively rare, and appears
to breed in small numbers only in west Holland, west France,
and, perhaps, in Portugal, migrating in winter through the west
of Europe to west Africa. It was first described by Willoughby
and Ray in their "Ornithologia," published in 1676, where,
1 The Palmated Newt used to occur (and possibly still occurs) in a pond in the Forest at High
Beach, Ed.