74 REPTILES. 



is agitated by fear, oozes a milky, bitter liquid, that has a strong odour, 

 and is poisonous to very weak animals. It is, perhaps, this circum- 

 stance which has given rise to the fable of the incombustibility of 

 the Salamander. It lives in wet places and hides itself in holes, 

 feeds on lumbrici, insects and earth, brings forth its young living, 

 and deposits them in pools ; at first they have branchiae, and their 

 tail is vertically compressed*. 



A Salamander resembling the common one, but entirely black and 

 entirely without spots, is found in the Alps, it is the Sal. atra (the 

 black Salamander), Laurent, pi. 1, f. 2. 



Sal. perspicillata, Savi. (The spectacled Salamander). Only 

 four toes to all the feet; black above; yellow, spotted with black be- 

 neath: a yellow line across the eyes. A small species from the 

 Appennines'j-. 



North America, which produces many more Salamanders than Europe, 

 has several that are terrestrial, with a round tail, but deficient in the glands 

 on the occiput^. 



Triton, Lavrenti. 



The aquatic Salamanders always retain the vertically compressed tail, 

 and pass nearly the whole of their existence in the water. The experi- 

 ments of Spallanzani on their astonishing power of reproduction, have ren- 

 dered them celebrated. If a limb be amputated, another is reproduced in 

 its stead with all its bones, muscles, vessels, &c. and this takes place se- 

 veral times in succession. Another not less singular faculty, discovered by 

 Dufay, is the power they possess of remaining enclosed in ice for a con- 

 siderable time without perishing. 



Their eggs are fecundated by the seminal fluid diffused in the water, and 

 both enter the oviduct together; they are expelled in long chaplets; the 

 young are not hatched until the fifteenth day, and retain their branchiae for 

 a longer or shorter time according to the species. Modern observers have 

 recognized several of them in France, but as the colour of these animals 

 changes according to the age, sex, and season of the year, and as the crests 

 and other ornaments of the males are only well developed in the spring, 

 the species have not been determined with certainty. When winter sur- 

 prises them with their branchiae, they retain them till the following year, 

 always increasing in size§. 



* See Ad. Fred. Funck. de Salam. terrcst. vita, evolutione, formatione, Berlin, fol. 

 1827. 



t We have ascertained that the Sal. a trois doigts, Lacep. II, pi. 36, is merely a 

 dried and somewhat mutilated specimen of the Sal. perspicillata. Add, S. Savi, Gosse. 



X Sal. venenosa, Daud., or subviolacea, Barton; — Sal. fasciata, Green; — Sal. tigrina, 

 Id.; — Sal. erythronota, Id.; — Sal. bilineata, Id.; — Sal. rubra, Daud. VIII, pi. 91, 

 f. 2; — S. variolata, Gilliam. Sc. Nat. Phil., 1, pi. xviii, f. 1, and several new species. 

 The Sal. japonica, Hourtuin, Bechst. trans, of Lacep., II, pi. 18, f. 1, is closely allied 

 to the erythronota. 



§ It was from an individual which had thus retained its branchire that Laurenti 

 made bis Proteus iritonius. 



