176 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 



is more fierce and carnivorous than any of the frogs or 

 toads. The salamandridae are extensively diffused over the 

 earth ; they generally are small animals, but one species, 

 Sieboltia, which inhabits a lake upon a basaltic mountain in 

 Japan, is three feet in length, and fossil species are found in 

 the schists of GEningen (miocene formation), which must have 

 been of nearly twice this measurement. The fluid which 

 exudes from the salamanders, as from other batrachia, is pro- 

 bably what has given rise to the vulgar notion that these ani- 

 mals can resist the action of fire. 



The remaining batrachia are isolated species, generally 

 limited in locality, and all of them retain in their maturity 

 some portion of the fish character. The Amphiuma, an eel- 

 like animal, two or three feet long, which is found in stagnant 

 pools in the more southern of the United States, has apertures 

 in the sides of the neck, the last vestige of the gill structure. 

 Deep underground, in waters never visited by daylight, re- 

 sides the blind Proteus, which continues to have entire gills 

 branching from the neck throughout the whole of life, and 

 only depends in a less degree upon lungs. With four short 

 and feeble limbs, it departs little from the form of the fish. 

 The Sirens, which inhabit marshes in Carolina, have no hind 

 limbs, and only rudiments of the anterior pair. In the North 

 American lakes is the Menolranchus, with constant gills, and 

 four very small limbs : it sometimes attains the length of three 

 feet. Another of these gilled batrachia is the Axolotl of the 

 Mexican lakes, the flesh of which is esteemed a delicacy. 



The reduction of limbs in some of these latter species reminds 

 us of the lacertilian animals on the approach of that family to 

 the serpent form. It is not therefore surprising, to learn that 

 there is a genus of undoubted batrachians which are wholly 

 serpentine in figure, that is, without limbs, and also possessed, 

 like the serpents, of unequal lungs. These are the Cecilia, or 

 blind-worm, and kindred species, all of them inhabitants of 

 warm countries ; usually of a very attenuated form, and about 

 two feet long. Till lately, the cecilia was ranked with ser- 

 pents ; but its passing through a metamorphosis, united to a 

 consideration of its naked skin, has at length assigned it to 



