WHITE-BELLIED C^ECILIA. Caxilia tentaculata. 



C.-KCILIA. Ccecilia yntcilu. 



The muzzle is rather broad and rounded. The body of the Slender Coecilia is extremely 

 elongated, being about two feet in length, and not thicker than an ordinary goosequill. 

 Its colour is almost wholly black. 



THE small but very remarkable order of animals which stands next in our list, has 

 proved an insoluble enigma to the systematic zoologists, who not only are unable to 

 decide upon any order to which it may belong, or in what precise relation it stands to 

 other reptiles, but are not even able to announce positively its class, or to say whether it 

 is a reptile or a fish. The three species which comprise this order if indeed they do not 

 form a separate class are so fish-like in most parts of their anatomy and their general 

 habits, that they might be regarded as belonging to the fishes, were not they allied to the 

 reptiles by one or two peculiarities of their structure. Some accurate and experienced 

 anatomists accordingly place these creatures among the fishes, while others, equally 

 experienced, consider them as belonging to the reptiles. In fact, the position in which 

 these creatures are placed depends wholly on the amount of importance given to the 

 reptilian or piscine characters. 



THE species represented in the engraving is that which is found in Africa, inhabiting 

 the beds of muddy rivers, and is known by the name of LEPIDOSIEEN or MUD-FISH. 



The habits of this creature are very remarkable. Living in localities where the sun 

 attains a heat so terrific during a long period of the year that the waters are dried and 

 even their muddy beds baked into a hard and stony flooring, these animals would be soon 

 extirpated unless they had some means of securing themselves against this periodical 

 infliction, and obtaining throughout the year some proportion of that moisture for lack of 

 which they would soon die. The mode of self-preservation during the hot season is very 

 like that which has already been mentioned in the case of certain frogs and other similai 

 creatures, but is marked by several curious modifications. 



When the hot season has fairly commenced, and the waters have begun to lessen in 

 volume, the Lepidosiren wriggles its way deeply into the mud, its eyes being so con- 



