Fishes. 



6451 



has proved it an amphibian ; you should read him." Another will assert, 

 " There is do doubt now : Owen has dissected it, and proved it a fish : 

 you must study his paper ; it is quite conclusive." I have been told 

 a hundred times over this story of the affair being e< settled," but two 

 successive informants have rarely admitted the same mode of settlement, 

 and it therefore appears perfectly legitimate for the truth- seeker to re- 

 open the question and consider the subject de novo. And here, in the 

 very outset, I cannot too distinctly disclaim any knowledge of the 

 internal structure of the animal beyond that which I find in Professor 

 Owen's invaluable memoir : in common with other naturalists, I regard 

 that great anatomist's definitions of the structure of the mud-fish as 

 all that can be desired ; difference of opinion as to its icthyac character 

 originates in the inferences drawn from acknowledged facts. One cha- 

 racter alone has been the subject of discussion and doubt, and to this 

 I shall briefly allude hereafter. 



The genus Lepidosiren was founded by Fitzinger, in Weigmann's 

 ' Archiv ' for 1837, on two specimens of an animal discovered by 

 Dr. Natlerer in South America : one of these w as found in a swamp on 

 the left of the Amazon, about Villa Nuovo, the other in a pond near 

 Borba, on the river Madeira, a tributary of the Amazon. Fitzinger 

 unhesitatingly accepted the four tendril-like processes attached to the 

 ventral surface of the animal as legs, and hence concluded the creature 

 was amphibian, but of a new and uncharacterized family. The species 

 was named L. paradoxa, a name expressing the author's difficulty in 

 reconciling its conflicting affinities. The genus was re-described by 

 Professor Owen, in the 1 Transactions of the Linnean Society,' in 1840. 

 The species, differing essentially from Natterer's, is a native of the Old 

 World, was taken in the river Gambia, and presented to the Royal 

 College of Surgeons, in 1837, by Mr. Thomas C. B. Weir, together with 

 a smaller dried specimen in indurated clay, baked hard by the sun. 

 The new species was called L. annectens : it is perfectly distinct from 

 L. paradoxa, having a less elongate form and only thirty-six pairs 

 of ribs, whereas the South American species has no less than 

 fifty-six. 



Living specimens of L. annectens were imported from Western 

 Africa in 1856, and exhibited in the Crystal Palace : we have two 

 published accounts of them ; the first by Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, in 

 the ' Illustrated London News' for September 20, of that year, and the 

 second by Mr. Bartlett, in the illustrated ' Proceedings of the Zool- 

 ogical Society' for the same year, at p. 346. This latter is included 

 in a paper by Dr. Gray, intituled " Observations on a living African 



