FAUNA OF THE SOUTHERN ALLEGHANIES. 401 
It was not of a kind familiar to me, and seemed evidently to 
depend for subsistence on the animal matter furnished by the 
trap-like qualities of the Sarracenia leaf. I did not observe 
any such tenant in the J. purpurea, where the hollow pe- 
tioles were frequently more or less filled with water. 
IIl. On some species of Spelerpes. — In his original 
descriptions of North American Salamanders, published 
many years ago by Professor Jacob Green, he mentioned 
one under the name of Spelerpes cirrigera, which was said to 
have been discovered in Louisiana. This animal was small, 
and furnished with a marked peculiarity in the shape of a 
dermal appendage or tentacle, dependent from the upper lip 
near the nostril. In other respects the animal was allied to 
the Sp. bilineatus, the small speeies so generally distributed 
over the United States. In Holbrook's extensive work on 
herpetology, this species is again described and figured, but 
no new specimens are mentioned as having been discovered, 
and it is regarded as very rare. In 1869 the writer made a 
study of the North American salamanders preserved in the 
Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, and examined with 
much interest, among others the types of Green's description 
of Spelerpes cirrigera from Louisiana. A narrow investiga- 
tion of these convinced me that no other character existed 
by which to distinguish them from a usual southern variety 
of Sp. bilineatus, than the two peculiar cirri originally ob- 
served by Green. Now these cirri are evidently remnants 
of an early larval character universal among tailed Batrachia, 
namely, the balancers. These are a long process on each 
side of the head immediately in front of the branchial pro- 
cesses, which appear very early, indeed almost simultane- 
ously with the latter. They are probably homologous with 
the beards of the larval Dactylethra of Africa described by 
Wyman and Gray, which give those tadpoles so much the 
appearance of Siluroids, or cat-fish. In our salamanders they 
disappear at various periods of growth, and sometimes leave 
AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. IV. 51 
