ORDER BATRACHIA. 479 



was in 1765-6, that Dr. Garden first introduced the Siren to 

 the notice of the scientific world, having sent both description 

 and individuals to Linnaeus, and our countryman Ellis. 



The learned Swede, believing with Garden, that this 

 animal never changed its form, created for it a peculiar order 

 of amphibia, which he termed meantes. But many other 

 naturalists of note even to a recent period, maintained that 

 the lacertlna of Linnseus, was not a perfect animal, but 

 merely the larva of some batracian reptile, more or less re- 

 sembling an unknown salamander, which, in the course of 

 age, would necessarily lose the external gills by which it was 

 characterized. Such was the opinion of Pallas, of Hermann, 

 of Schneider, and of Lacepede. Camper, in which he was 

 followed by Gmelin, went even so far as to make a fish of it, 

 of the eel genus. 



Our author has established on anatomical grounds, that 

 the Siren is the type of a separate genus, whose osseous frame 

 differs totally from that of the salamanders ; that this reptile 

 could never have hind feet or lose its gills ; that it was 

 consequently a true amphihium, respiring as it pleased, for 

 its whole life, either in the water, with gills, or in the air with 

 lungs. These deductions, first published in 1807, have been 

 fully confirmed by time. 



From the correspondence of Garden, with Linnaeus, and 

 with Ellis, it appeared that the American physician had seen 

 sirens, whose size varied from four inches to three feet and 

 a half, all equally provided with gills, and propagating, 

 without losing them. 



All travellers, and all naturalists of the New World, par- 

 ticularly Barton, have confirmed the facts announced by 

 Garden ; Messrs. Say, Harlan, Mitchill, and Green, have 

 published interesting notes on the siren, or on the singular 

 reptiles which approximate to it. Many sirens of all sizes 

 have been sent into Europe, always with gills and without 



