294 Barnes on Batracian Animals and doubtful Repiils. 
are as long as the legs of the animal, the upper one being 
largest and the lowest one least. The color is a deep brown, 
or ash gray, with numerous rounded blackish spots, and a 
vast number of very minute white points, invisible to the 
naked eye, scattered over the whole. The skin is smooth, 
without scales, and the sides are impressed with a number 
of strong wrinkles, or transverse furrows, and a lateral sul- 
cus is continued from the gills to the tail. This Proteus 
inhabits the Lake Tezcuco, that surrounds Mexico; and is 
that opinion Dr. Harlan coincides. Lacepede is, however, 
of the opinion that the animal is a Proteus, and that it should 
be arranged next to his: Proteus Tetradactylus, because it 
has five toes on the hind feet. This, as before observed, 
would certainly make a very intelligible distribution of these 
_ animals, and altho the osteology may perhaps differ a little, 
yet it seems the most eligible mode o arrangement hitherto 
proposed. ‘The Axolotl, I should think, carried his gills 
permanently ; if so, he cannot be called a Salamander, but 
ought to be denominated, as by several respectable authors 
he has already been called; a Proteus. Why should they 
insist on the axolotl as a larva? Becatise its hones are soft, 
and its claws cartilaginous. The former of these may show 
juvenility in the animals that have hard bones, but if the 
bones should be somewhat similar to those of the cartila- 
e 
animals examined by Cuvier were both young ones, and of 
course they must have had bones less solid than adult speci- 
mens ; so that from this circumstance no sound conclusio 
can. be drawn in either way; and as to the claws, such is 
their nature that it is difficult, as before mentioned, to deter- 
min whether several of the related genera have nails or not. 
Support of the branchiz are similar, and “ that an apparatus 
so complex. as that of the branchiwe, their arches, and the 
scles that move them, should disappear without leaving 2 
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