27 
tant, when you, and those other naturalists who have 
written so ingeniously on the subject of the Siren, 
will fall, however cautiously or reluctantly, into my 
opinion, that this reptile is, really, a perfect or finished 
animal ; and that the American Sirens, together with 
the Proteus anguinus, and other similar animals of 
your continent, must form a genus in the vast class of 
Amphibia, entirely distinct from the family of the Sa- 
lamanders, however nearly allied to it? But although 
I entertain this opinion concerning the Sirens, I do 
not think it will be necessary or even proper, as some 
late naturalists have supposed, to retain the Linnaean 
order of Meantes^^ which I, at least, shall expunge 
from my intended work on Zoology. We shall ren- 
der our arrangements in natural history too complex, 
and I may add, too artificial: if we go on construct- 
ing new orders for every animal in which we observe 
considerable deviations of structure from the ordi- 
nary forms and structure, of the animals most nearly 
allied to it. It is true, that an animal, such as the 
Siren, to which nature has given both lungs and 
branchiae, would seem, in a series of animal aflBni- 
ties, to be placed with considerable propriety, in a 
kind of intermediate order between the Amphibia and 
the Pisces. And it is possible that Dr. Pallas, had 
he been acquainted with the real nature of the Siren, 
would not have so readily proposed the abolition of 
of the older Meantes, as I have done, f 
See Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, c 
t Professor Pallas appears to have been one of the first natu- 
ralists who conjectured, that the Siren lacertina belonged to the 
genus Salaraandra The memoir of this illustrious man is inserted 
in Nov Comment. Petrop. tom. 19 . 
