OF THE UNITED STATES 95 



ities. This is seen in that remarkable work of the time, the 

 Physiologus, which still taught that a salamander could quench 

 fire. But the Arabic Physiologus taught that it was a stone 

 that possessed that property. Later, asbestos proved to be the 

 stone in question, asbestos was the salamander of Marco Polo, 

 and a kind of incombustible cloth was manufactured from its 

 libers. Thus the Arabs, who knew not whether a salamander 

 was beast or bird, and in some way mixed it up with the Phoenix, 

 came to believe that asbestos cloth was made either from the 

 feathers or else the hair of a salamander. So Bacon and some 

 other writers of his time called asbestos salamander's wool. 

 ' Cabalistic moderns refer to the spirits of tire as the salamanders 

 of that element, and it is by no means uncommon even to-day to 

 find people in plenty who still have the salamander myth in their 

 minds, and will innocently ask if such a creature does not really 

 exist, and possess the power to pass unharmed through an ordi- 

 nary tire, quickly. I know a captain in our army whom I never 

 could convince that those spiny-eoated lizards of the west, popu- 

 larly known as " horned toads," were not " some kind of a 

 salamander, or a crustacean, that could pass unharmed through 

 the flames of a camp-fire." And another officer of the same regi- 

 ment, more open to conviction, had his mind disabused by me 

 of the belief it had, that larval salamanders and the famous 

 " Gila monster " were one and the same animal, and that their 

 " breath was poisonous," and would cause certain death to the 

 person who unfortunately happened to breathe it. 



In Europe, from the very earliest times down to the present 

 day, all the tail-bearing amphibia were considered by nearly 

 everybody to be salamanders, and consequently popularly asso- 

 ciated with the mythical creatures so named by the ancient and 

 medieval writers. 



Over a century and a quarter ago, or in 1768, a naturalist by 

 the name of Laurenti designated a genus of vertebrated animals 

 of the Class Amphibia, as the genus 8alamandra,anA to this genus 

 biologists now restrict all the typical forms known to us as sal- 

 amanders. They are most interesting creatures to study, and i t 

 is hardly necessary to add that they are not possessed of any of 

 the remarkable powers which the writers of the middle ages. 

 and both before and since, would have us believe. 



Taken in connection with what has been pointed out above, 

 it may be said that the Salamandrida is a subgroup of the 



