Povondra, while seeking a hobby, finds an article about the newts building new islands in the paper. He believes this is spectacular progress and tells his wife and son how he played a part in it by showing Captain van Toch in to see Bondy. He believes he and Bondy have “a nose for people” (165); the news article inspires Povondra to begin collecting newspaper articles about the newts.

When Bondy sees the collection Povondra accrues, he has the company send him any clippings that were not going into the syndicate’s archives. These are in a variety of languages. However, Povondra does not clearly mark the date and publication of the clippings, and his wife periodically threw out some clippings when they started to run out of space. So, not all of the information about newts survived. The following chapter gathers and reproduces the information in the surviving clippings.

The summary of the newts’ history is somewhat chronological, but also moves between different topics regarding the newts. The points about the newts are supported in footnotes that include Povondra’s newspaper clippings, as well as other reports. It begins with a discussion of the economics of newts after the Salamander Syndicate was established.