The original six specimens received in 1864 at the Jardin des Plantes, which had been carefully kept apart from their progeny, remained in the branchiate condition, and bred eleven times from 1865 to 1868, and, after a period of two years' rest, again in 1870. According to the report of Aug. Duméril, they and their offspring gave birth to 9000 or 10,000 larvae during that period. So numerous were the axolotls that the Paris Museum was able to distribute to other institutions, as well as to dealers and private individuals, over a thousand examples, which found their way to all parts of Europe, and numberless specimens have been kept in England from 1866 to the present day. The first specimens exhibited in the London Zoological Gardens, in August 1864, were probably part of the original stock received from Mexico by the Société d'Acclimatation but do not appear to have bred.

"White" axolotls, albinos of a pale flesh colour, with beautiful red gills, have also been kept in great numbers in England and on the continent. They are said to be all descendants of one albino male specimen received in the Paris Museum menagerie in 1866, which, paired with normal specimens in 1867 and 1868, produced numerous white offspring, which by selection have been fixed as a permanent race, without, according to L. Vaillant, showing any tendency to reversion. We are not aware of any but two of these albinos having ever turned into the perfect Amblystoma form, as happened in Paris in 1870, the albinism being retained.

Thus we see that in our aquariums most of the axolotls remain in the branchiate condition, transformed individuals being on the whole very exceptional. Now it has been stated that in the lakes near Mexico City, where it was first discovered, the axolotl never transforms into an Amblystoma. This the present writer is inclined to doubt, considering that he has received examples of the normal Amblystoma tigrinum from various parts of Mexico, and that Alfred Dugès has described an Amblystoma from mountains near Mexico City; at the same time he feels very suspicious of the various statements to that effect which have appeared in so many works, and rather disposed to make light of the ingenious theories launched by biological speculators who have never set foot in Mexico, especially Weismann's picture of the dismal condition of the salt-incrusted surroundings which were supposed to have hemmed in the axolotl - the brackish Lago de Texcoco, the largest of the lakes near Mexico, being evidently in the philosopher's mind.

Thanks to the enthusiasm of H. Gadow during his visit to Mexico in the summer of 1902, we are now better informed on the conditions under which the axolotl lives near Mexico City. First, he ascertained that there are no axolotls at all in the Lago de Texcoco, thus disposing at once of the Weismannian explanation; secondly, he confirmed A. Dugès's statement that there is a second species of Amblystoma, which is normal in its metamorphosis, near Mexico but at a higher altitude, which may explain Velasco's observation that regularly transforming Amblystomas occur near that city; and thirdly, he made a careful examination of the two lakes, Chalco and Xochimilco, where the axolotls occur in abundance and are procured for the market. The following is an abstract of Gadow's very interesting account. "Lakes Chalco and Xochimilco are a paradise, situated about 10 ft. higher than the Texcoco Lake and separated from it by several hills. High mountains slope down to the southern shores, with a belt of fertile pastures, with shrubs and trees and little streams, here and there with rocks and ravines. In fact, there are thousands of inviting opportunities for newts to leave the lake if they wanted to do so.

Lake Xochimilco contains powerful springs, but away from them the water appears dark and muddy, full of suspended fresh and decomposing vegetable matter, teeming with fish, larvae of insects, Daphniae, worms and axolotl. These breed in the beginning of February. The native fishermen know all about them; how the eggs are fastened to the water plants, how soon after the little larvae swarm about in thousands, how fast they grow, until by the month of June they are all grown into big, fat creatures ready for the market; later in the summer the axolotls are said to take to the rushes, in the autumn they become scarce, but none have ever been known to leave the water or to metamorphose, nor are any perfect Amblystomas found in the vicinity of the two lakes."

In Gadow's opinion, the reason why there are only perennibranchiate axolotls in these lakes is obvious. The constant abundance of food, stable amount of water, innumerable hiding-places in the mud, under the banks, amongst the reeds and roots of the floating islands which are scattered all over them, - all these points are inducements or attractions so great that the creatures remain in their paradise and consequently retain all those larval features which are not directly connected with sexual maturity. There is nothing whatever to prevent them from leaving these lakes, but there is also nothing to induce them to do so. The same applies occasionally to European larvae, as in the case observed in the Italian Alps by F. de Filippi. Nevertheless, in the axolotl the latent tendency can still be revived, as we have seen above and as is proved by the experiments of Marie von Chauvin. When once sexually ripe the axolotl are apparently incapable of changing, but their ancestral course of evolution is still latent in them, and will, if favoured by circumstances, reappear in following generations.

Bibliography

G. Cuvier, Mém. Instit. Nation. (1807), p. 149, and in A. Humboldt and A. Bompland, Observ. zool. i. (1811), p. 93; L. Calori, Mem. Acc. Bologna, iii. (1851), p. 269; A. Duméril, Comptes rendus, lx. (1865), p. 765, and N. Arch. Mus. ii. (1866), p. 265; E. Blanchard, Comptes rendus, lxxxii. (1876), p. 716; A. Weismann, Z. wiss. Zool. xxv. (Suppl. 1875), p. 297; M. von Chauvin, Z. wiss. Zool. xxvii. (1876), p. 522; F. de Filippi, Arch. p. la zool. i. (1862), p. 206; G. Hahn, Rev. Quest. Sci. Brussels (2), i. (1892), p. 178; H. Gadow, Nature, lxvii. (1903), p. 330.

(G. A. B.)