SALAMANDEES. 
279 
Here also I saw several flue specimens of Sieboldia 
maxima, the gigantic salamander of Japan. They 
are kept in large dark tanks, and are as ugly rep- 
tiles as can he well imagined ; black sluggish 
creatures with warty skins, flat heads, no eyes 
worth mentioning, blunt noses, and short sprawling 
legs. They are said to come from the mountain 
streams of Kiusiu, but in reality they are from the 
neighbourhood of Osaca in Niphoii. The only • 
kind of salamander I saw in the shallow streams 
which are numerous about Nagasaki was the little 
dingy triton, with an orange-mottled belly, very 
similar to the Avater-newt of Europe. 
I bought a couple of Sieboldias for the captain, 
and had them conveyed on board, Avith a plentiful 
supply of small live eels for their maintenance 
during their voyage to England. One of these 
creatures died in the transit, and liis bones are noAv 
in my museum ; the other, I beheve, is still to be 
seen, the “ admired of all admirers,” in the reptile- 
room of the Zoological Gardens. When they had 
consumed all the eels, small pieces of raAv meat 
