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Show 886 APPENDIX C.- REPTILES. EEPTILES. BY SPENCER F. BAIRD AND CHARLES GIRARD. SIREDON LICHENOIDES, Baird. PL. 1. SPIC. OHAE.- Body uniform blaokish brown, ooyered all oyer with licheniform patches of grayish yellow; snout rounded; tail compressed and lanceolated; toes broad and short. The addition of an authentic new species to the genus Siredon will justly be considered as of great interest to herpetologists. Two species are now clearly ascertained to exist; perhaps a third, if the one mentioned by Prof. Owen* be really such. It is not improbable that many more exist, as we have accounts of many localities of " fish with legs," in various parts of Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas, although, as yet, we have been able to procure only these two species. The possession of these, however, allows a comparison of characters by which the absolute generic features of the group can be better ascertained. The figures hitherto published of S. mexieanue, and the imperfect sketch of S. maculatus, are far from being satisfactory, and do not allow any accurate comparison to be made of their specific features. As these will have to be critically redrawn in order to meet the wants of science, we have endeavoured to obtain, and we hope with success, figures of S. lichenoides that will enable future comparisons to be satisfactorily made. Our specimen is a little more than six inches and a- half in length, the figures being all of natural size. Whether this be the absolute size of the species which it represents, we are unprepared to state. If such was the case, it is considerably smaller than S. mexicanus. The tail forms nearly the half of the entire length, and the head a little less than the fifth of the same. The head is ovoidal, much broader than deep, and the snout rounded, a character which at once will distinguish our species * Annals and Magazine of Natural History, xiv. 1844, 28. |