Immediately after the breeding season the adults leave the water, and seek their food among the vegetation of the land. They become duller in colour, and the skin becomes more opaque with a fine velvety surface. They are then the Dry Evats of country folk. When aquarium-keeping was a fashionable drawing-room hobby in mid-Victorian days the Smooth Newt was an annoying pet, owing to its objection to remaining in the water after the breeding season had passed, and being so frequently found in a dry and shrivelled condition in obscure corners of the room.
In parts of Ireland it is the Man-eater or Man-keeper (as well as Dry Ask and Dark Lewker) owing to a superstitious belief that it enters the mouths of sleepers, and thereafter robs them of all nutriment of which they may partake.
Palmate Newt (Molge palmata, Dum. and Bibr.).
In general appearance the Palmate Newt is similar to the Smooth Newt, and is as smooth as that species. There is no doubt that it is commonly mistaken, for it, for a few years ago it was considered rare, but closer examination shows that whilst it is local in the south-east of England, it is more plentiful than the Smooth Newt in the west.
It is a smaller animal than the Smooth Newt, its length being three inches only. In the breeding season its distinctness is evident, for the male has then a nearly four-sided body owing to the development of a fold of skin along each side of the back. The crest, instead of being high in front and having an undulating edge, rises gradually from the head, is of less height and has an entire margin. The tail appears as though the tip had been cut off and the attempt to renew it had got only as far as the development of a short thread from the centre of the cut portion. But what gives the species its name is a black web which connects the toes. The tail develops a fin along its lower edge in both sexes, and this in the male is edged with blue and in the female with orange. Another point of distinction lies in the colour of the throat. Instead of the black-dotted white or yellow of the Smooth Newt, the throat of the Palmate Newt is flesh-coloured without dots.
Above, the colour is olive-brown with darker spots; below, the centre is orange bordered by pale yellow, with or without black spots.
After the breeding season, when the adults leave the water, the webbing of the feet—being no longer useful—becomes reduced to a margin along each toe and no longer constituting a palm; but the truncated tail remains as a specific distinction, though the thread-like prolongation becomes very short in the female.