THE LEPIDOSIREN. 



187 



The muzzle is rather broad and rounded. The body of the Slender Caecilia is ex- 

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

 goosequill. Its color 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 cr 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 import- 

 ance given to the reptilian or piscine characters. 



WHITE-BELLIED C/ECILIA.-Cc/Wa teataculata. 



SLENDER C/ECILIA. Caecilia gracllla. 



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

 ing the beds of muddy rivers, and is known by the name of LEPIDOSIREN 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 period- 

 ical 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 similar 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- 



