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II. On the Lepidosiren of Paraguay, and on the external characters of Lepidosiren and 

 Protopterus. By E. Eat Lankester, M.A., F.R.S., F.Z.S., Linacre Professor of 

 Comparative Anatomy in the University of Oxford. 



Received and read June 19th, 1894. 



[Plate II.] 



J.HE object of the present communication is to place in the hands of zoologists a 

 carefully-executed drawing of a South-American Lepidosiren (PI. II. fig. 1), which, as 

 will be seen below, there is reason to consider as identical with Natterer's Lepidosiren 

 paradoxa (Fitzinger), side by side with a drawing of the African Protopterus annectens, 

 Owen, from the Gambia (PI. II. fig. 2). Measurements are also given of the two 

 species, and illustrations of the proportionate size and of the structure of the scales of 

 the three species — Ceratodus forsteri, Krefft, Protopterus annectens, Owen, and Lepi- 

 dosiren, from Paraguay (PL II. figs. 4-9). The remarkable villi of the posterior limbs 

 of the male specimens of the Paraguay Lepidosiren are also carefully represented 

 (PL II. fig. 3). 



From these data zoologists will be able to form a more correct conception of the 

 appearance of Lepidosiren than is possible from Natterer's figure, whilst the differences 

 between it and Protopterus become obvious. 



I do not propose to attempt to decide critically whether the specimens of Lepidosiren 

 from Paraguay, which I have examined, are the Lepidosiren paradoxa of Fitzinger or 

 not 1 . The specimens described by Natterer, and named by Fitzinger, were obtained 

 from ponds in the neighbourhood of Borba (not Bahia, fide Castelnau), on the Madeira 

 Eiver, a tributary of the Amazon system. One specimen is recorded by Castelnau as 

 captured since Natterer's discovery — having been taken by himself in the Lake Ucayale, 

 which is in Eastern Peru, also connected with a tributary of the Amazons, — and two 

 specimens (one only a skeleton) are in the possession of Prof. Giglioli, of Florence, one 

 from Manaos, the other from Madeira, both localities in the Amazon basin. 



The Paraguay specimens, which were brought to Europe in the beginning of 1894 by 

 a German traveller, Dr. Bohls 2 , were obtained from the neighbourhood of the Upper 



1 See, however, the postscript to this paper, p. 20. 



2 Dr. Bohls has communicated to the Royal Society of Sciences of Grbttingen (' Nachrichten,' 1894, p. 80) an 

 account of his capture of these specimens and of the various points relating to the natural history of Lepidosiren 

 observed by him. The account is so interesting that I shall give here some extracts from it. Dr. Bohls 

 states that he discovered these Lepidosiren in the interior of the swamps of the Chaco (on the right bank of the 

 Paraguay River). The Lepidosiren does not occur in the river itself, but only in tile pools of the swampy 



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