160 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. ix. 



SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE MENOBRANCHUS 



MACULATUS. 



By Henry Montgomery, M.A. 



Science Master in the Collegiate Institute. Toronto, and Lecturer on 

 Botany and Zoology in Toronto School of Medicine. 



The Menohranclius maculatus is an aquatic animal belonging 

 to the vertebrated class known as Amphibia, is of the order 

 Urodel'i, and the family Proteidce. It occurs in Lakes Cham- 

 plain, George, and Seneca ; also in Onion River and other waters 

 of the northern and eastern United States, as well as in various 

 Canadian lakes and rivers. All the specimens before me are 

 from the Don River, Humber River, and Toronto Bay. It is said 

 occasionally to reach the length of two feet ; but the majority of 

 adults seem to be little more than half that length. 



This tailed amphibian is provided with two pairs of locomotive 

 appendages, each of which is nearly two inches long, and has 

 four toes, destitute of claws. The head is very much depressed 

 or flattened from above downwards, is somewhat semicircular in 

 outline, and is furnished with a wide mouth, fleshy lips, two 

 minute nostrils opening close to the oral cavity, and a pair of 

 small but well developed eyes ; eyelids are absent. The teeth, 

 which consist of one row in the lower and two rows in the upper 

 jaw, are numerous, of medium size, conical, and separated by 

 short intervals. In each side of the lower lip is a deep, horizon- 

 tal groove or furrow, commencing about one-sixth of an inch 

 from the median line, and passing outwards and backwards to 

 the limit of the gape, and into which groove passes the attenu- 

 ated margin of the upper overlapping lip. The constriction 

 forming the neck, between the head and trunk, is not very 

 strongly marked, but a tolerably large, horizontal fold of skin, 

 extends backwards under the throat. On the sides of the neck 

 are situated the branchiae or breathing-organs ; they are func- 

 tional throughout life, and are composed on each side of three 

 bunches of reddish bushy lamellae, or rather three clusters of 

 filamentous processes springing from three main stems, and in 

 these filaments the blood is submitted to the action of the oxygen 

 gas dissolved in the water supplied them. There are two slits, 



