LEPIDOSIRENS. 



(Oct. 19, 1889.) 



THE Manatee is dead, and its tank in the Reptile 

 House is now occupied by Lepidosirens, or African 

 mud-fish (Lepidosiren annectens). Thus one very 

 old-world form has given way to another immeasur- 

 ably older j for these fish are representatives of the 

 Dipnoi a type reaching back to the time when the 

 Devonian rocks were in course of formation. The 

 Dipnoi, once extremely plentiful and widely dis- 

 tributed, are now represented by four species only 

 Lepidosiren paradoxa, a very rare American 

 species, an inhabitant of the river Amazon and its 

 tributaries, of which little is known; two species 

 of Ceratodus or Barrmunda, plentiful in the 

 Burnett, Dawson, and Mary rivers in Queensland ; 

 and Lepidosiren annectens, the African species, 

 specimens of which are now living in the Zoo. 

 The last-named is by far the commonest and most 

 widely distributed, being found throughout the 

 whole of tropical Africa, in the Upper Nile, in the 

 Central Lake region in some parts of which, 

 Baker tells us, it is eaten by the natives both fresh 

 and dried 011 the Zambesi, and in all the rivers of 



