328 Prof. Owzw's Description of the Lepidosiren annectens. 
compared with the head and the extremities,—a difference which is quite 
independent of age or growth; and the character, * pedes valde distantes," 
which Dr. Natterer has founded on the length of the trunk, must be restricted 
as a specific application to the Lepidosiren paradoxa. 
Dr. Natterer obtained two specimens of his species; one of these, which 
measured upwards of three feet in length, was found in a swamp on the left 
bank of the Amazon, above Villa Nuova; the other, which was nearly two 
feet long, was taken in a pond near Borba, on the river Madeira, a tributary 
of the Amazon. The specimen about to be described, though differing appa- 
rently from the L. paradoxa only in certain proportions of its outward form, 
is a native of a different continent, and was taken in the river Gambia*. 
It is a female, with the ovaria well-developed, and measures twelve inches, 
eight lines in length: its greatest circumference is four inches and a half t 
The head commences by an obtuse muzzle, and gradually enlarges in all its 
dimensions to the gill-openings, which are situated immediately anterior to 
the base of the pectoral extremities: the length of the head from the snout to 
the gill-opening is one inch, eleven lines; the trunk, from the pectoral to the 
ventral filamentary fins, is five inches, five lines. The anus, or rather the 
cloacal vent, is a small elliptical aperture marked with radiating lines, which 
is situated three lines behind the ventral filaments 
liarity as does that of the Lepidosiren 
median plane: 
and offers the same pecu- 
paradoxa in not being situated on the 
in the present specimen it was on the right side of a longitu- 
dinal fold of integument which occupied the middle line. The distance from 
the vent to the end of the tail is five inches. The trunk gives a wide ellip- 
tical transverse section}, and maintains a pretty uniform size, slightly de- 
ereasing in breadth to the ventral filaments. Beyond these the tail becomes 
more rapidly compressed, and, after a short distance, diminishes also in verti- 
. cal dimension, till it ends in a thin point, 
A membranous dorsal fin commences at the distance of four inches from 
* It was presented to the Royal Colle 
ge of Surgeons, Jun 183 
together with a smaller dried specimen inclosed Rd e 7, by Thomas C. B. Weir, Esq., 
: : 2 urated clay, baked hard b th . Several 
species of insects, peculiar to the Gambia, or African forms, acc oed iia id ao It 3 
described and figured by permission of the Museum Comm es es 
ittee of th | 
t Tas. XXIII. fige. I. & 2. Tb. fig diee peus 
