NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 103 



tliis batrachian, and their comparison with those of man.* 

 The siren's blood-discs were obtained by the professor 

 from one of the external gills of the deceased specimen 

 when it was in good health, in the month of October 1841. 



But, without loading these pages with scientific dis- 

 quisition, it is impossible that any one should even 

 glance at the history and conformation of the sirens 

 without being struck with the anomalies which they 

 present. Pallas and the other distinguished zoologists 

 above mentioned may well be pardoned for considering 

 the form that of one of the SalaTnandridce in its pro- 

 gress to perfection. The first sight of it suggests the 

 presence of a salamander in a metamorphic stage, and it 

 is only upon close examination that the observer is 

 satisfied that the animal has reached its completion. It 

 is as if Nature had been determined to show, that if 

 she wished to indulge in the freak she could arrest the 

 animal's development, and under the guise of a salaman- 

 drian larva present a creature perfect according to its 

 kind, and forming a finished link in the great chain of 

 beings ; as perfect, after its kind, as Sieholdtia 'maxima, 

 in which enormous newt, the slits of the gill-aperture — 

 which always remains open in Menoi^oina, an American 

 salamandrian — are closed. 



Dr. Von Siebold found this creature — which comes 

 nearest of living beings to Scheuchzer's Ho'nuo diluvii 

 testis, now termed Andrias Scheuchzeri, and which has 

 been proved to be a great fossil salamandrian — ^in a lake 

 on a mountain of basalt, in Japan ; just such a locality 

 as we find assigned in the Arabian Niglits to enchanted 

 aquatics. - The doctor brought away with him, some 

 twelve years since, a male and a female ; but the former 



* See Penny Cyclopcedia, article ' Siren (Zoology),' vol. xxii. 

 p. 66 ; where these observations and a history of the animal will 

 be found. 



