HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION xv 



twenty to forty. The membranes in which the foetuses are enclosed, 

 after the manner of spiders, are soon thrown off.^ A figure is given of 

 the larvae, which clearly belong to S. maculosa^ but no external gills 

 are shown. An early dissection of a female Salamander carried out 

 by Hoffmann c. 1642, but not published until 1722, included an 

 examination of the heart, in which only one auricle is mentioned, the 

 abdominal viscera, together with the spleen, gall-bladder, and bile- 

 duct, and certain of the larger blood-vessels. He notes that the 

 uterus is paired, and from it he took thirteen small living foetuses 

 which were black in colour and not yet provided with the yellow 

 markings. Somewhat later, in 1673, Steno describes the two ovaries 

 and fat bodies and also the two oviducts (with contained ova) which 

 he says are not joined at either end. 



The first attempt to work out the general anatomy of a 'Salamander' 

 was made by Jacobaeus (1676-86). His little book was severely 

 criticized by Swammerdam, whose own monograph on the Frog was 

 on a much higher plane. A careful examination of Jacobaeus's text, 

 and a comparison of his figures with dissections of Triton, make it 

 quite certain that his subject was Triton and not Salamander. In 

 general his statements are more or less admissible if applied to 

 Triton, but are difficult to understand in relation to Salamandra. He 

 gives for the time a fairly complete account of the abdominal viscera, 

 and makes the interesting observation that the heart beats for many 

 hours after removal from the body, as in Frogs, Toads, and the 

 Torpedo. He figures what might be scattered supra-renal nodules, 

 but from their distribution are perhaps the Malpighian bodies. 

 Almost contemporary with Jacobaeus is the more ambitious and 

 scholarly work of Wurff bain (1677, 1683). He claims to have dis- 

 sected several terrestrial Salamanders, which hardly accords with the 

 fact that his visceral anatomy is taken almost entirely from Jacobaeus, 

 and his notes on the skeleton from Goiter. He, however, correctly 

 describes the contents of the stomach, which Jacobaeus found to be 

 empty, and mentions for the first time the shedding of the epidermis, 

 but as he says it takes place in water he can hardly have been dealing 

 with Salamandra. He looked for the auditory organ but was unable 

 to find it. Previous statements that the terrestrial Salamander is 

 viviparous are confirmed, and Wurffbain found thirty-four larvae in 

 one specimen. He illustrates the appearance of these larvae, but as 

 no external gills are shown or mentioned, we may suspect that his 

 figures owe more to Imperato than to nature. 



^ Imperato is quite correct in this. The Salamander is normally ovo-viviparous, but 

 the egg membrane may rupture before the egg is laid. 



