16 [Senate 



AMPHIBIANS. 



Menobranchus maculatus, Barnes. The Spotted Proteus. 



This beautiful specimen was taken in the Hudson river, near the city 

 of Albany, in the month of May, 1855, and presented to the State 

 Cabinet, by Dr. Van Kenssklaer, of Greenbush, Rensselaer coujity, 

 N. Y. 



This species is not described by Dekay, in the New- York 

 Fauna; and as the description of the Menobranchus maculatus of 

 Barnes^ by the Rev. Zadock Thompson, in his Natural History of 

 Vermont, so correctly and accurately describes our specimen, we 

 have thought proper to publish his description entire. 



Description. General color dark cinereous gray, produced by minute 

 yellowish specks on a dark bluish ground, and irregularly interspersed with 

 circular spots about the size of a pea, of a darker hue ; the throat and 

 central part of the abdomen. nearly white; a brownish stripe commencing 

 at the nose and extending backwards over the eye; the margin of the tail 

 often of an orange tinge, with blackish blotches near the extremity. The 

 head is large, flattened, and the snout truncated ; eyes small and far apart ; 

 mouth large ; throat contracted with a transverse fold in the cuticle be- 

 neath; tongue large and fleshly; teeth small and sharp, two rows in the 

 upper jaw and one in the lower. The gills are external, large, and each 

 consists of three delicately tufted or fringed lobes, which, when vibrating 

 in the water, are of a fine blood-red color ; body cylindrical, covered with 

 a smooth mucous skin; tail long, flattened and broad vertically, and 

 rounded at the end like that of an eel ; legs four, each foot furnished with 

 four toes resembling fingers, but without nails, although the cuticle at the 

 extremities is dark colored, having much the appearance of nails. The 

 total length of the specimen before me, and from which the above de- 

 scription is made, is 12^ inches, and this is about the usual length. 



