Fishes. 



8527 



had in all twenty-eight or twenty-nine young ones, but as I did not know how to manage 

 them I lost them all. My second salamander had twenty-eight young ones about a 

 fortnight after the accouchement of the first. The salamander takes to the water to 

 bring forth her young, and after producing six or seven leaves it. During this period 

 the young ones must be removed, or the mother will very likely eat them. They must 

 be fed as soon as possible after their birth, or they will attack one another. The young, 

 when removed from the mother, should be placed in a shallow pan, with some shingle 

 arranged on one side, so that they may get upon it for air, and the depth of water 

 should not exceed an inch or an inch and a half. The food I brought up my young 

 upon was either raw mutton or beef, which they ate most ravenously ; pieces the size 

 of a pin's head only should be given to them at first, but after a fortnight they will 

 take pieces cut lengthwise, thin and about the size of a small worm. Their form is 

 like the mother, excepting that they have flat tails and fluffy gills, which disappear 

 when they are about to leave the water. They change their skins constantly, and at 

 about four months old they change and become the colour of the mother ; before their 

 change, however, they are almost transparent, excepting where the dark spots are 

 visible. Out of the twenty-eight young, unfortunately only fourteen were born alive, 

 the reason I fancy being in consequence of my having moved the mother from a large 

 fern case with a tank in it to a smaller one with only a small quantity of water, for 

 the whole time she was in the small case, which was about a week, she never had any 

 more young ones, but after I put her back into the large case, the very next day I found 

 four dead and two or three living ; the remainder were born (some living and some 

 dead) on the next day. I forgot to say that she had six or seven in the large tank 

 before T removed her: my reason for moving her was that I was afraid the frogs, toads, 

 triton or water tortoise which I keep in the case might attack and eat the young ones 

 as they were born. These fourteen that were born alive I managed to rear in a milk- 

 pan, giving them fresh water every day and washing the shingle. They were fed every 

 day. Six of them I lost by their crawling up the side of the pan when ready to leave 

 the water, and, although search was made all over the room, nothing could be found 

 of them ; one died, and the rest I have still alive. They are very healthy, and are fed 

 upon small common garden worms, for they reject the meat after they leave the water. 

 Their growth is very slow, for mine are now more than twelve months old, and they 

 only measure two and a half inches from the nose to the tip of the tail. Their colour 

 is like that of the mother, as I said before, but brighter, and the spots are different in 

 all but two ; one is striped with four stripes, two yellow and two black, the others are 

 spotted in different ways. A curious fact concerning my salamanders is that they were 

 very large when 1 bought them, and have kept about the same size ever since, and even 

 after they had had their young did not appear any smaller ; they have refused food all 

 the winter and yet are about the same size. — Thomas Lendon Merriman; 27, Suther- 

 land Place, Bayswater. 



A Viviparous Fish. — The 2nd of May, 1859, finds us at anchor in the safe and 

 pretty port of Mah-lu-san. In the afternoon I accompany the seining party. The 

 day is lovely; the whole face of the country is bright and smiling; the barley is ripe 

 in the fields, the hills are covered with a varied green, and the little rippling waves of 

 the clear water of the bay are dancing in the sun. Stretching far away to the north 



