SALAMANDERS. 377 



for the time contain water, but inaccessible to the regular 

 inhabitants of water. These places drying up, millions are 

 destroyed. Their reproductive power, however, seems in- 

 computable. 



Tribe Immutabilia. The Crypto Branchiadae have no 

 gills, but breathe by exposed spiracles or branchial orifices 

 at the neck. 



PROTONOPSIS Gigantea, (Barton.) This is commonly 

 called the Alleghany Hell-bender. It is the large water- 

 newt of Western Pennsylvania, the Ohio, and Missis- 

 sippi. It is "slate-colored, mottled with dusky." This 

 enormous newt, which sometimes attains to thirty inches 

 or nearly three feet, lives entirely in the water, eating 

 fish, worms, shell -fish, etc. It is one of the most re- 

 volting creatures in existence, resembling Milton's sin, its 

 sprawling, flabby, slimy, and almost amorphic outlines sug- 

 gesting some "fortuitous concourse of atoms," presided 

 over by the genius of deformity and disgust, rather than the 

 clearly demarked structure of a regularly-organized animal. 

 The euphonious name of hell-bender, which is commonly 

 applied to this newt, seems exceedingly appropriate. It 

 is constantly seizing the boy-angler's hook, and when landed 

 with gaping mouth and wicked gestures, is generally left 

 in the quiet possession of rod, line, hook, and all, the terror- 

 stricken lad retreating with precipitation and fear from 

 what he calls the "poison alligator." The Protonopsis fol- 

 lows the streams of the western side of the mountain as 

 high up as there are any considerable volumes of water. It 

 is almost confined to Western waters ;* abounding in streams 

 which contain the soft-shelled turtles, (Tryonix,) and seem- 

 ing, like that animal, to have an original natural affinity for 

 that region, f 



The Alleghany, being the eastern line of the great cen- 



* It has been found in the Susquehanna, near Columbia. Baird. 

 f See Dekay, Holbrook, etc., on Eastern appearance of the 

 Tryonix. 



32* 



