62 MIOCENE FAUNA. 



difficult to distinguish from the Swiss bombinators and natter- 

 jacks, and snakes are found which are very nearly allied to 

 the Swiss species. Prof. Heer also finds an enormous sala- 

 mander, a gigantic frog, several crocodiles, and a surprising 

 abundance of tortoises, which give the fauna a very hetero- 

 geneous character. 



The gigantic salamander* (Andrias Scheuchzeri, Holl., sp.) is 

 one of the most celebrated fossils of the Miocene region. It 

 was first discovered in GEningen 138 years ago, and regarded by 

 Scheuchzer as " a skeleton of a man drowned in the Deluge," an 

 error for which we must not be too hard upon him, considering 

 the bad preservation of the specimen which he possessed and the 

 very imperfect knowledge which prevailed in his time of the 

 anatomical structure of man and animals. Numerous specimens, 

 much better preserved, have since been discovered. A very per- 

 fect specimen is represented, little more than one fourth of the 

 natural size, in PL XI. fig. 1 f. This is one of the smallest and 

 probably youngest salamandroid animals which has hitherto been 

 found at (Eningen ; and only a few bones are deficient in its ske- 

 leton. Its total length is 0*63 metre (about 2 English feet) ; 

 the head is 0*077 metre (or 3 inches) in length, by 0*086 metre 

 (or 3J inches) in breadth; the vertebral column is 0*310 metre 

 (or 1 foot) long, and the tail 0*241 metre (or about 9 inches) 

 in length. A glance at the figure shows that the animal had a 

 short broad head, very obtusely rounded in front, with the jaws 



* Scheuchzer described the species as " a man witness of the Deluge." 

 Gessner, however, had previously recognized that this fossil was not that of 

 a man ; "but he referred it to a fish (Silurns). P. Camper (1790) referred it to 

 its proper place among the Eeptilia ; and Cuvier was the first to prove scien- 

 tifically its position and its relationship to the salamanders, describing the 

 species as a gigantic salamander. Dr. J. Tschudi raised it to the rank of a 

 distinct genus (Andrias)) which was accepted by Hermann von Meyer in his 

 admirable work on the Vertebrata of (Eningen, and the species was cited as 

 Andrias Scheuchz&ri, Tschudi. Van der Hoeven has shown that this species 

 is to be united in the same genus with the Japanese form. The American 

 species upon which Harlan founded the genus Menopoma (Cryptobranchus, 

 Leuck.) are also scarcely separable from it. The latter are distinguished by 

 a persistent branchial aperture behind the head, whilst in the Japanese spe- 

 cies this disappears. Their skeletons cannot be distinguished. 



t This recently discovered specimen is one of the ornaments of the collec- 

 tion of the Polytechnicum at Zurich. 



