tlieir habits. The water serpents constitute, in our opinion, the nearest 
approach to the aquatic or swimming lizards.” Might not that singular 
family of the batrachia, the sirens, have been mentioned here also, which 
with serpentiform shape, have also the rudiments of legs; and in some 
species two or four small limbs, much disproportioned to the size of the 
body? In point of dimension, both the sirens and the hydri fall greatly 
short of the fossil saurians, and these being extinct, (as it is supposed,) 
there still remains a wide gap between the cartilaginous fishes and reptiles, 
untenanted (as believed) by living forms. It appears, therefore, worthy 
of consideration, whether the Stronsa animal may not have claims to be 
placed in the vacancy which, in Swainson’s arrangement, (and also in more 
lately proposed systems,) exists between the two groups above mentioned. If 
such a claim be admissible for the Stronsa animal, it may at once be made 
for the congeners of that animal, the American and Norwegian ophidians. 
No doubt, the fossil saurians are generally considered to have been 
reptiles, breathing the atmospheric air, and living on or near the surface ; 
but as we have no other data than their ancient skeletons to judge by, it 
may be open to question, whether some of this family did not dwell at the 
bottom. It is not altogether to be disregarded in this view of the subject, 
that the external form of the Stronsa animal, carefully restored from the 
preserved admeasurements and other particulars, so far as it can be com¬ 
pared with the osseous structure of the fossil remains, assimilates nearer 
to that of the plesiosaurus than of any other animal form with which we are 
acquainted. 
