AMPHIUMA MEANS. 9] 
Hasirs. The Amphiuma means lives in muddy waters or in mud. Harlan 
says they have been found at Pensacola, three feet or more deep in mud, of the 
consistence of mortar, in which they burrowed like earth-worms. They inhabit 
the ditches of our rice-fields, and feed on small fish and various fresh-water 
shells, as Unio, &c.; beetles and other insects have also been found in their 
stomachs. Sometimes like eels they are found on dry land, but for what purpose 
they approach it is unknown. 
GeocrapuicaL Disrrisution. North Carolina must, for the present, be con- 
sidered as the northern limit of this animal, and it is even very rare in that state. 
In South Carolina it is more common, but is only abundant in some districts, as 
about Combahee river. ‘The Amphiuma means is also found in the Floridas, 
Alabama, and Mississippi, and is said to be abundant in Louisiana. 
Generat Remarks. ‘This singular reptile was made known to Linneus by Dr. 
Garden of Charleston, South Carolina, so often mentioned in the progress of this 
work, but at too late a period to allow him to give it a place in any of the editions 
of the Systema Nature published during his life time. 
Garden, in his letter to Linneus,* describing this reptile, calls it “an unknown 
’ and further he says, “at first sight I suspected 
animal, the only one I ever saw;’ 
it to be another species of Siren, but upon nearer examination I found so many 
differences, that there proves to be no relationship between them.” Two years 
subsequent to this, I find Dr. Garden, in a letter to Mr. Ellis, of London, for the 
first time calls this animal “Amphiuma means.” 
As Linnexus never published any account of this animal, Garden’s description 
was of course locked up in manuscript, and thus our animal remained unknown 
to other naturalists for just fifty years from the time of its discovery. In 1821, 
Sir James Edward Smith, the eminent botanist, published the “Correspondence 
* Smith’s Correspondence of Linnzus, vol. i. p. 333. t Ibid. vol. i. p. 599. 
