SALAMANDERS. 



479 



singly on leaves of Myriophyllum, which adhere to the glu- 

 tinous egg, concealing it.* (Cope.) Those of Desmognathus 

 are laid connected by a thread both on land and in water. 

 The common land salamander, or Phthodon cn/fhronotum 

 Baird, lays its eggs in summer in packets under damp 

 stones, leaves, etc. ; the young are born with gills, as is the 

 case with the viviparous Salamandra atra of the Alps. The 

 possession of gills by land salamanders, which have no use 

 for them, and which consequently drop off in a few days, 

 leads us justly to infer that the land salamanders are the de- 

 scendants of those which had aquatic larvae. 



The lowest form of this order is the aquatic Congo-snake 

 or Amphiuma means Linn., in which the body is large, very 

 long, round and slender, with small rudimentary two-toed 

 limbs ; there are no gills, though spiracles survive. It lives 

 in swamps and sluggish streams of the Southern States. 



A step higher in the Urodelous scale is the Menopoma, which 

 is still aquatic, with large spiracles, but the body and feet 

 are as in the true salamanders. The Menopoma Alleghani- 

 ense Harlan, called the hellbender or big water lizard, is 

 about half a metre (1^-2 feet) in length, and inhabits the 

 Mississippi Valley. Allied to the Amphiuma is the gigantic 

 Japanese salamander, Crt/ptobranchus Japonicus Van der 

 Hoeven, which is a metre in length. Allied in size to this 

 form was the great fossil sal inlander of the German Tertiary 

 formation, Andrias Sclieuchzeri, the homo diluvii testis of 

 Scheuchzer, thought by this author to be a fossil man. 



In the true salamanders the body is still tailed, the eyes are 

 rather large ; there are no spiracles ; they breathe exclusively 

 by their lungs, except what respiration is carried on by the 

 skin. 



The genus Amblystoma comprises our largest salamanders ; 

 they are terrestrial when adult, living in damp places and 

 feeding on insects. The larvae retain their gills to a period 

 when they are as large or even larger than the parent. The 

 most interesting of all the salamanders is the Amblystoma 

 mavortium, whose larva is called the axolotl, and was origi- 

 nally described as a perennibranchiate amphibian under the 

 name of Siredon lichenoides Baird. This larva is larger than 

 * Gage's Life-history of the Vermillion-spotted Newt. Am. Nat. 1891. 



