a doubtful amphibious Animal of Germany. 245 
the bottom, and seemed to look for food ; it often took a shell 
into its mouth, but gave it out again, swallowing none. Several 
times it rose to the surface, stretched its head out of the water, 
and took in air, but returned directly to the bottom. He never 
could find any traces of eyes, even with a magnifying glass. 
He assents, however, to Dr. Scopoli's opinion, that it is an 
animal in a perfect state, and sui generis. 
In another letter he says, that he received the two specimens 
sent therewith alive ; but that they died in a few hours, being 
kept in common water. 
In a third letter he says, in answer to some enquiries I made, 
that all the specimens he knows of were found in the months 
of August and September; but that some have been seen by 
fishermen, so early as the month of July, when the season 
happened to be very rainy, and the lake overflowed. 
He says the animal uses its feet in creeping on the bottom, 
and in ascending along the sides, of the vessel, if of wood ; that 
it creeps very slowly, or, to use his words, very deliberately. 
In this particular it differs from every other creeping animal, 
insomuch, that he is tempted to call this motion (which he says 
is amusing to behold) characteristic of the animal. 
It often produces a hissing kind of noise, pretty loud, more 
so than one should expect from so small an animal, and re- 
sembling that produced by drawing the piston of a syringe. 
He once observed that, while doing so, it hung on the side of 
the vessel, with the fore part of the body out of the water. He 
suspects that two very small darkish spots, in a parallel direc- 
tion on the forehead, might be the eyes : he discovered them 
by looking with a magnifier at the head, when out of the water; 
the animal hanging quietly on the sides, where it continued 
