Salamandra punctata, Gmel. This appellation was originally given and restricted to the stelio of Catesby. tab. 10. (represented in the bill of Ardea Herodias) and was adopted by many subsequent authors, but was finally rejected by Daudin, who considered the species the same as Barton's subviolacea. He concurred with Mr. Latreille in appropriating the name thus rejected to var. β of Lacerta, aquatica of Gmel. Notwithstanding this high authority I cannot but coincide with Professor Barton in this instance, in believing it altogether distinct. The single character of the subocellate spots, though not remarked by this author, is a sufficiently discriminative one; these ocellæ are always present, and in no one of the varieties I have seen has the approximation to the subviolacea been so considerable as to render a specific discrepance equivocal. Catesby's variety with the ocellæ on the tail seems to be the least common; in general these spots, or epupillate ocellæ, are exclusively confined to a line on each side of the back, about six in each, extending from the base of the head to the origin of the tail, though there are sometimes scattered smaller ones on each side of the body, and upon the vertex of the head, they are of a beautiful reddish colour, enclosed by a definite black areola; the upper part of the body is brownish, with numerous, distant black points, and a slight vertebral, obtuse carina, the inferior surface of the body of a fine yellow or orange, with distant black points, the tail[37] is compressed, ancipital, attenuated to an obtuse tip, longer than the body, and punctured with black in like manner. The younger specimens vary considerably, in being, on many parts of the body, destitute of black punctures, and in having the dorsal and ventral colour, of the same pale orange. It is decidedly aquatic. Several specimens are preserved in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and from these it is evident that the reddish colour of the subocellate spots is destroyed by the action of the antiseptic liquid; to this circumstance it is probably owing that these spots have been hitherto described as white.
After stating these differential traits, it may be proper to observe, that the S. maculata of Shaw is synonymous with the above. But I think it most proper to restore Gmelin's name punctata, which will afford an opportunity to do justice to the memory of Laurenti, by reviving the original name by which he distinguished the Var. β. of Lacerta, aquatica, Gmel., that of parisinus.
Bufo cornuta. This animal, which has been stigmatized as the most prodigiously deformed creature known to exist!! is generally supposed to inhabit North America as well as Surinam. I do not think it has ever been found in North America. Shaw, in Nodder's Nat. Misc. says it is principally found in Virginia, but in his General Zoology, I think he says that Seba was in error when he represented its native country to be North America. Two other species of Bufo have been correctly stated to inhabit this country, viz. B. musicus, and Crapaud rougeâtre, Daud. (B. rubidus) first noticed as distinct by Mr. William Bartram. I discovered a third species on the banks of St. John's river, East Florida, which, as I am not at present prepared to describe, I shall not surreptitiously name.
It is, I conceive, an incumbent duty on the describer of a natural object, to deposit his specimen, or a duplicate, when practicable, in some cabinet or museum, to which he should refer, in order that subsequent writers may be satisfied with the accuracy of his observations, by examining for themselves. By such reference, and by the re-examination of the same objects by others, the plethoric redundance of synonyma, that prolific source of accumulating error, will be banished or elucidated, and naturalists will most readily arrive at the knowledge of truth, which is, or ought to be, the grand leading object of their labours.
PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY.
