A new species of Siren. 57 



the reality and the knowledge of the animal at which we aim. 

 The Hell-Bender of the Ohio (sit venia verbo) is a very differ- 

 ent animal from the Professor's Proteus ; it is every way larger, 

 and more bulky in its appearance ; has no branchial appen- 

 dages to its spiracula, and has consequently without much 

 violence been arranged with the Salamanders : it might more 

 properly come next to the Amphiuma, or indeed it another 

 species of that genus. It was called by the late Dr. Barton, 

 who probably examined it before any one else, Protonopsis j 

 it was afterwards carried to France by M. Michaux, and has 

 been described by Sonini and Lattreille as a Salamander — (Sa- 

 lamandre des Monts Alleghaniens.) The Proteus of the lakes 

 may possibly be the larva of this animal ; for most of the ani- 

 mals that inhabit the lakes are found in the western rivers. It 

 seems much to resemble the Axolotl of Mexico, and the dis- 

 tance between the abode of these two does not prevent them 

 from being the same, there being a great similarity between 

 the natural productions of Mexico and the western states. But 

 a very accurate description of the animal under consideration 

 was published by Schneider, in the year 1799, in his Historia 

 Amphibiorum fasc. 1. pag. 50. He observes that the speci- 

 men which he examined was said to have come from Lake 

 Champlain, where it is caught along with fish, and reckoned 

 poisonous by the fishermen. Body more than eight inches 

 long, and nearly one inch in thickness, soft, spongy, pervious 

 with many pores, with three rows of round spots on each side, 

 varied with rows of black ones ; tail compressed and ancipital, 

 spotted on both sides, the inferior edge straight, the superior 

 curved, terminating in a rather cylindrical end. Head broad 

 and flat, eyes small, nostrils anterior, in the margin of the up- 

 per lip, a double row of teeth in the upper jaw, a single in the 

 lower, conic, obtuse, longish ; tongue broad, entire, free at 

 the fore part, aperture of the mouth opening even to the ver- 

 tical line of the eyes ; lips like those of a fish ; feet four cleft, 

 four-toed, clawless ; fissure of the anus opening longitudinal- 

 ly. Three branchia? on each side externally propendent, op- 



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