m8 



NATURE 



[Feb. 



Ib8i 



shaped in form, of a light-brown colour, marked with a 

 darker shade ; the young seem full-grown when onl)- six 

 months old, and are ready to join their parents in their 

 long autumn journey, which may extend as far as the 

 Cape of Good Hope, where they are known to arrive in 

 large numbers. The quail, unlike the partridge, also 

 figured in our illustration, has several wives, and displays 

 great spirit in keeping rivals at a distance ; while the 

 mother is attending to the care of her young ones, the 

 cock bird, too, often amuses himself in the vicinity with 

 his companions. 



Our second illustration is taken from the higher of the 



two classes of the Ichthyopsida, known as the Amphibia ■ 

 these skull-bearing animals have no anmion and but a 

 rudimentary allantois, and they breathe by gills at some 

 period of their life. In this volume they are placed as an 

 independent class alongside of the Sauropsidian reptiles 

 Among the permanently tailed Amphibians (Urodela) the 

 sub-order containing those species with gills that fall off 

 [Lathicibranchiaia) contains the interesting species known 

 as Salamanders. It is of one of these of which we give 

 the accompanying figure, not only as a fair specimen of 

 those m the volume we are reviewing, but also in the 

 hope of awakening some interest in a rather uncommon 



Amphibian The next genu; [to Salamandral Pleuro- 

 deles, \iA% short ribs, which give the appearance as if they 

 penetrated the flanks, but their ends come against the 

 tissue under the skin and produce horny projections 

 ttiereon. The tail is long and compressed, and the small 

 tongue IS adherent only in front, and there are two series 

 of palatine teeth in longitudinal serie?. The Spanish 

 kind (/'. Waltln) has an ashv grey body, very prettily 

 marked with long transverse stripes and dots. It is like 

 a heavy lizard." Lord Clermont, in his useful work on 

 the Xeptiles of Europe, describes the tongue as small, 

 warty, free behind and on the sides, adhering in front ; he 

 also describes the ribs as piercing the skin, and they are 



also said by some to be capped by horny tubercles ; but 

 this is denied by Leydig. Prof. St. George Mivart tells 

 us that this species differs from all the other Urodela in 

 the length and strength of its ribs, the longer ones con- 

 siderably exceeding the length of two of the longest 

 vertebrs of the body. I\I. \VaItl first discovered it at 

 Chiclana in Spain ; Schinz states that it is very common 

 in Andalusia in tanks and cisterns of water; Wallace 

 gives its distribution as Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. 

 Lord Clermont hints that the Bradybates vcntricosus of 

 Tschudi is probably the young of this species. 



Now when Lord Clermont wrote his book there was 

 not much more known about this interesting little animal, 



