7 
tlian the larva of a Salamaiidra, as Hermann^, La 
Cepeclef, and yourself have imagined, should we 
not, ill the long period which I have mentioned, 
have seen the reptile altogether laying aside its bran- 
chiae ? or, at least, would it not be time to discover 
some material change in these appendages, either in 
the complexity of their structure, or in the nature 
and degree of the function to which they are sub- 
servient ? 
My Siren is about eighteen inches in length. In 
the public Museum of this city, I have had an oppor- 
tunity of seeing, and of repeatedly examining, ano- 
ther specimen, two feet and a half in length. I was 
not able to perceive that the branchial appendages 
of this large, and highly vigorous individual, under- 
went the smallest alteration during the period of at 
least nine months that it was kept, for the inspection 
of the curious, in a large vessel with water. 
* Commentarius Tabula; affinitatum Animalium, &c. 
f Histoire Naturelle des Quadi-upedes Ovipares et des Serpens. — 
It may, possibly, amuse the cautious naturalist to read the follow- 
ing observations, by the elegant French Zoologist, on the subject of 
the Siren. ^ “ Nous avons (he says) examine avec soin la figure 8c 
la description que M. Ellis en a donnees dans les transactions philo- 
sophiques ; and nous n’avons pas dout8 un seul moment que cet 
^nrmal, bien loin de constituer un ordre nouveau, ne fut une larve ; 
il a les caractdres g^nereaux d’un animal imparfait, 8c d’ailleurs 
il a les caracteres par ticuliers que nous avons trouves dans les sala- 
mandres a queue-plate.” Tome Premier, 611. Mr. Schneider, 
whose treatment of Mons. la Cepdde is by no means courteous, seems 
under the necessity of paying a kind of (coarse) complipient to him, 
for having, in one respect at least, made something like an approach 
to the truth. After passing a very severe censure upon the French 
naturalist’s observations on the metamorphosis, &c., of the Sala- 
manders, the great amphibiologist has the following words : “Fac- 
tum igitur casu potius puto, ut suspicio Galli de Sirene lacertina 
Linnaei proposita, p. 611. tarn bene caderet, nec a scopo veritatis 
plane aberraret.”’ Historiae Amphibiorum naturalis et literariae 
Fasciculus Primus, &c. p. 41. Jenae : 1799. 
