366 Prof. J. van der Hoeven on the Genus Menobranchus 



his researches on the doubtful reptiles. This is the species to 

 which the inhabitants of the United States of North America 

 apply the name oi Alligator or Hell-bender^, while the Delaware 

 Indians call it Tweeg or Tweche. At the commencement of our 

 century a specimen of this species, from the Leverian Museum, 

 was described by Dr. Shaw under the name of " Leverian Water- 

 Newt"t« An individual of the same species, which the traveller 

 Michaux had obtained on the Alleghany Mountains and pre- 

 sented to the museum of the Jardin des Plantes, was described 

 by Latreille under the name of " Salamandre des monts Alle- 

 ganis^'J. 



It is surprising that, throughout these descriptions, the 

 branchial orifice is not noticed. It is described in the tract of 

 Barton which we have just cited, and is apparent in the figure, 

 otherwise very mediocre, which accompanies the same§. Cuvier 

 speaks of a '^cicatrice" on the sides of the neck, in precisely 

 the same position as the gills in Siren\\. 



All the naturalists who have recognized the two distinct groups 

 of the Urodela have placed the Hell-bender in the same division 

 with the doubtful reptiles. But it is necessary to seek for 

 further characters for this group of Ichthyoids than the persist- 

 ence of the gills. Such characters are found in the absence of 

 eyelids, in the conformation of the vertebrse (the bodies of 



* In a tract by Prof. Barton, printed for his correspondents and friends 

 (Memoir concerning an Animal of the class of Reptilia or Amphibia, 

 which is known in the United States by the names of Alligator and Hell- 

 bender: Philadelphia, 1814), and which I procured from the same source 

 as that on the Siren, we read that the latter name was applied to this ani- 

 mal by the negroes of Virginia, on account of its slow oscillatory motions 

 in its natural habitation the water, and which the slaves thought suggestive 

 of the horrible tortures of the infernal regions. 



t General Zool. vol. iii. pt. 1. pp. 303-304 : Lond. 1802. 



X Hist. Nat. des Reptiles, par Sonnini et Latreille, (Paris, 1802) ii. p. 53, 

 pi. 54. fig. I ; Daudin, Hist. Nat. des Reptiles, torn. viii. (An xi., 1803) 

 pp. 231-232; (Bosc) Nouveau Dictionn. d'Hist. Nat. tom. xx. (An xi.) 

 p. 48. The same lines occur, unaltered, in the last edition, revised and 

 augmented, of this Dictionary, tom. xxx. (Paris, 1819) p. 61 ; the figure of 

 this species, pi. xii. fig. 1, in tom. xxxi. p. 317, the same as that of Latreille, 

 scarcely deserves reference. 



§ This has been copied by Leuckart in his notice of the Ichthyoid 

 Amphibians (Isis, 1821, pi. 5), who adds another and much worse figure, 

 taken from a specimen stuffed with straw (!) in the Museum of Vienna. 

 We owe a better figure to J. R. Peale, appended to the observations on the 

 Salamander genus by Dr. Harlan (Annals of the New York Lyceum of 

 Nat. Hist. 1825, vol. i. pi. xvii. p. 234). This figure has been copied in 

 the English remodelled and augmented edition of the ' Regne Animal ' by 

 Griffith (1831, vol. ix. p. 475). I would also crave permission to cite that 

 pubhshed by me in the 'Tijdschrift voor Natuurlijke Geschiedenis en 

 Physiologic,' 1838, iv. pi. 5 b. fig. 7. 



II Recherches, I. c, p. 101. 



