ORDER BATRACHIA. 465 



has fallen into oblivion and contempt, so much so that the 

 interest which it really deserves to excite, is no longer taken 

 in it, since it has been despoiled of those attributes in which 

 it was so gratuitously invested. This is an evident proof 

 of the immense influence of the light of truth directed against 

 objects of arbitrary belief, or absurd conceptions. The 

 salamander has ceased to furnish similitudes, even to the 

 poets, and to be the emblem of deathless love, and death- 

 despising valour. This daughter of fire, with a body of ice, 

 whose origin was not less surprising than its power, which 

 owed its existence to the purest of elements, by which it 

 could not be consumed, which mountebanks had vaunted 

 as capable of arresting the progress of the most violent con- 

 flagrations, and authors have assumed as the basis of so 

 many interesting allegories, has dwindled down into a simple 

 batracian reptile of the second family of its order, and con- 

 stituting the type of a distinct genus. Such is the sad work 

 which our modern naturalists, sworn enemies of all fictions 

 but their own, have made with the ingenious and brilliant 

 fabrications of antiquity. 



However, if time has dissipated the false glory of the 

 salamander, and refuted all its chimerical pretensions, it has 

 on the other hand accumulated very important facts in its 

 history, and advantageously substituted for a futile romance, 

 a series of interesting facts founded in truth. 



The salamander was placed by Linnaeus among the lizards, 

 to which it has no relation, being destitute of claws, and a 

 heart with two auricles. Among the species of this genus, 

 which remain in the water only during their tadpole state, or 

 when they reproduce, and whose eggs exclude the young in 

 the oviductus, we shall notice the following — 



The Common Salamander, whose external description is 

 in the text, exhibits very important facts in its anatomy, 



VOL. IX. 2 H 



