SALAMANDER. 



585 



excluded. The length of time which they continue 

 in this state varies with the species, and also with 

 the climate and the season. In very northerly places 

 the eggs are of course deposited at a later period 

 than they are in warmer climates ; they are also 

 often retarded by the frosts, which congeal the eggs, 

 but do not extinguish the principle of life in them ; 

 and when the hatching is very much protracted in 

 this way, the animals have not length of season suffi- 

 cient for carrying them through their transformations, 

 and thus they appear with gills in the following sea- 

 son. This happens also in the alpine regions of 

 warmer countries, and it has led to a multiplication 

 of species. The cartilaginous arches which support 

 the gills are seldom wholly obliterated in these ani- 

 mals ; and when the gills have stood the winter, they 

 remain for almost the whole of the ensuing summer, 

 and partially for a much longer time. It was from 

 one of these specimens that Laurenti of Vienna 

 formed his genus Proteus tritomus, a blunder which, 

 in the blundering translation of the Regne Animal, 

 purporting to be by "Edward Griffith, F.L. S., and 

 others," has been charged against Linnaeus instead of 

 Laurenti, though the latter was without doubt the 

 originator of it. 



One cannot absolutely say that the water salaman- 

 ders are more obedient to the influence of natural 

 causes than the land ones, because the skins of the 

 latter are sensible in a very high degree. The 

 aquatic ones are, however, more capable of endur- 

 ance than the others. They can bear to be frozen 

 up in a solid mass of ice, and yet seem as healthy as 

 ever when gradually thawed out. There are also 

 few animals, whether vertebrated or not, that have 

 such powers of reproducing lopped members as the 

 water salamanders. They will, in a very short time, 

 as was proved by the experiments of Spallanzani, 

 reproduce the same member again and again, perfect 

 in all its bones, muscles, and vessels ; and, though 

 their organisation certainly does not rank very high 

 among vertebrated animals, it is far more complicated 

 than that of the Crustacea which have this repro- 

 ductive power. 



Among these animals there are wonderful degrees 

 of endurance of all kinds ; and though they are at 

 present not very rare in some places, they appear 

 more decidedly to belong to a former state of things 

 than even the land ones. We are not aware that 

 any vestige of the remains of an extinct species of 

 land salamander has been found in any country, but 

 the case is different with the aquatic ones. These 

 bones have been found in the schistose strata at 

 (Eningen, in Germany, indicating a length of at 

 least three feet, which is four times as much as that 

 of any of the species now existing in Europe, or we 

 believe anywhere else. The most curious thing about 

 these reptile remains, is the fact that Scheuchzer, a 

 physician of Zurich, who published a work in 1723, 

 should have regarded them as the remains of a human 

 being. Such, however, is the case ; and that learned 

 person wrote a treatise, Homo Diluvii Testis, endea- 

 vouring to prove that the fossil bones of an animal 

 of the very lowest of the vertebrata were really those 

 of the very highest. At that time, however, all the 

 great accumulations of animal and vegetable remains, 

 wherever they happened to be found, were referred 

 to the Deluge in the time of Noah, as stated in the 

 book of Genesis. The parties never paused to con- 

 sider whether the flood there mentioned occurred in 



such a manner as to produce circumstances of this 

 kind, or into the question of there having been 

 human beings in Germany at the time referred to by 

 the sacred historian, or not. But the proofs are 

 now abundant that there is not a vestige of human 

 remains in any one accumulation to which a general 

 cause or a very ancient date can be assigned. The 

 once famed fossil man has thus now quietly taken its 

 place as nothing more than the evidence that there 

 once existed in that part of the world an aquatic 

 salamander of much larger size than any that now 

 occur in the living state. This, it will be admitted, 

 is not much information ; but the refutation of error 

 is always in itself, in so far, the establishment of 

 truth ; and it is one of the many proofs which the 

 earth furnishes that it was fit for the habitation of 

 very different animals, and these, for the greater 

 part, of aquatic habits, before it was fit for the habita- 

 tion of human beings. Of the living species of these 

 singular animals not much can be said ; their man- 

 ners are obscure ; and they appear to vary so much 

 with age and season, and also with climate, that the 

 specific differences are not easily made out. There 

 appear to be several species both of Europe and of 

 North America, but they are comparatively little 

 understood. 



THE MARBLED SALAMANDER (T. marmorata) is 

 found rather plentifully in the south of France, and 

 in some other of the warmer parts of Europe. It 

 spends the summer in the water, or, at least, rarely 

 appears on land at that time ; but it is said to winter 

 in holes of trees or of the earth, hybernating in a 

 state of torpor even in the warmest places in which 

 it is found. It grows to the length of eight or nine 

 inches. Its skin is slightly roughened by small 

 tubercles. Its colour, on the upper part, is dull 

 green, with large irregular blotches of brown ; and 

 on the under part it is brown, with small speckles of 

 white. There is a reddish line down the middle of 

 the back ; and, in the male, there is a small crest 

 along this line marked with black spots. It does not 

 appear, however, that this dorsal crest is permanent, 

 or anything else than an ornament in the season of 

 reproduction. This is described as' being the least 

 aquatic of the whole ; but, though it is an animal of 

 which specimens can be obtained without much diffi- 

 culty, very little is known of its feeding or of any of 

 its habits. 



THE SPOTTED SALAMANDER (T. alpestris) is 

 found in more elevated places than the preceding 

 species, and it does not attain the same size. It is 

 mottled with slate-colour, and brown on the upper 

 part, and red or orang on the belly, with a row of 

 small black spots, close to one another, along each 

 flank. The skin in this one, as in the former, and 

 indeed in all the aquatic salamanders, is roughened 

 by small tubercles. 



THE CRESTED SALAMANDER (T. cristata) has the 

 dorsal crest on the male much larger than any of the 

 others, but still that crest is only an appendage of the 

 breeding season, and wears off in the course of the 

 summer. It has the skin roughened with tubercles ; 

 is brown on the upper part, and orange on the under, 

 both being marked with round blackish spots ; and 

 the sides have lines'of small white spots. The crest of 

 the male is high, and formed into a series of points ; 

 and in the pairing time it is of a violet colour. 



THE PUNCTURATED SALAMANDER (T. punctatd) 



has the skin free from tubercles. It is bright brown 



