HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION xix 



was morphologically not the Reptile it was supposed to be. Townson 

 ( 1 794— 5) draws attention to the fact (previously known to Aristotle, 

 Coiter, and Malpighi) that the lungs of Frogs do not collapse when 

 the wall of the cavity in which they lie is opened up. Therefore the 

 mechanism of respiration must be very different from that of the 

 Mammalia. He then proceeds to investigate buccal respiration in 

 Salamandra. He describes and figures a pair of long narrow 'sterno- 

 hyoid' muscles,'' which arise from the pelvic girdle and are attached 

 to the hyoid. These muscles draw the hyoid downwards and back- 

 wards, and thus increase the cavity of the mouth. When they are 

 cut respiration ceases. Other muscles, the constrictors of the 

 pharynx, elevate the hyoid and draw it forwards — thus contracting 

 the cavity of the throat. According to Townson, when the mouth 

 cavity is opened up and the muscles of the hyoid left intact, the 

 hyoid is still drawn backwards and forwards, and the glottis opened 

 and shut, although the lungs remain collapsed; but when the muscles 

 of the hyoid are cut the glottis alone is unaffected, and still continues 

 to open and shut. Townson claimed that the contents of the bladder 

 were as pure as distilled water. It is, therefore, not a urinary bladder, 

 but acts as a reservoir for water which is 'further distributed as their 

 economy may require'. 



The first comprehensive treatise to collate previous observations 

 on the Salamander, and combine them with many original observa- 

 tions, is to be found in Cuvier's Lefons. In the first edition of this 

 important work the Salamander material relates chiefly to the skele- 

 ton and muscles. Between the first and second editions, however, 

 the Salamander must have been further investigated, since the latter 

 edition, which was posthumous and not prepared by Cuvier, in- 

 cludes much additional matter on the species. In the first edition of 

 of the Lefons (1805) he states that the Batrachian heart has a single 

 auricle and ventricle, and in the second edition (1839) the statement 

 is repeated with the editorial qualification, as regards the auricle, of 

 the word 'apparently'. The editor of the latter edition, G. L. Duver- 

 noy, who had evidently read Davy's paper of 1828, proceeds to add 

 that the auricle is divided into two chambers by a very thin partition, 

 more membranous than muscular, the free border of which penetrates 

 slightly into the cavity of the ventricle. In the tadpole, however, the 

 heart is like that of a fish, and has only one auricle. In the second 

 edition of the hegons Duvernoy (1846) gives a good description of 

 the cloacal glands of Salamandra under the name of 'prostates'. This 

 was presumably based on Rathke. In the Ossemens Fossiles of 1 824, 

 ' = rectus abdominis profundus+ rectus cervicis profundus of this work. 



