SIREN. Siren lacertina, Lin. (Syst. Nat., i., Addenda), is an animal belonging to the class Amphibia (q.v.). It forms the type of the family Sirenidae, called by Prof. Huxley Trachystomata, among the group Perennibranchiata. The body is elongate and eel-like, only the anterior limbs being present; the posterior are entirely wanting. The anterior limbs are short and feeble, and each is furnished with four digits pointed at the ends. The head is small; the snout is short and broad, and the nostrils are placed at its extreme end. The tongue is free anteriorly. The jaws are destitute of teeth and covered with a horny sheath like a beak. There are numerous teeth on the vomer, arranged in two large patches converging anteriorly. The eyes are very small. On each side of the neck are three branched external gills attached to the first, second, and third branchial arches; and below the gills are three reduced branchial apertures. The tail is shorter than the body, much compressed, and provided with a median membranous fin; the tail terminates in a point. The skin is smooth, and black in colour, sometimes sprinkled with white dots. Siren grows to a large size, some specimens measuring 3 feet in length; the largest example in the British Museum is 670 mm. or about 2 feet 3 inches. The animal inhabits the stagnant waters of marshes in South Carolina and Texas....

SIRENS, fabulous creatures of Greek mythology, that, like the Loreley of German legend, lured mariners to destruction by their sweet song. In the Odyssey Ulysses sails past their island; but, warned by Circe, he had stopped the ears of his crew with wax and caused himself to be bound to the mast. In Homer they are two in number, but in later writers they are generally three, and are located on the coast of Italy, near Sorrento and Capri, or on the Straits of Messina. The tomb of one of them, Parthenope by name, was shown at Naples in Strabo’s time. A sanctuary of the Sirens stood on a headland near Sorrento. According to Eratosthenes the Sirens were a three-headed rock separating the Bay of Naples from the Gulf of Salerno; but Strabo says they were three rocky islands on the southern side of the cape. The cape itself (now Cape Campanella) was sometimes called the Cape of the Sirens. When the Argonauts drew near the isle of the Sirens, Orpheus struck up and drowned their song. According to Hyginus the Sirens were daughters of the river Achelous and the muse Melpomene, and because they had not rescued Proserpine from Pluto they were turned by Ceres into winged creatures, who were to live only so long as no one passed by them as they sang. So, when Ulysses had eluded them, they flung themselves into the sea. According to another story, they were instigated by Hera to vie with the Muses in singing; the Muses were victorious, and plucked the feathers from the Sirens and made crowns for themselves out of them. In art they are usually represented with the bodies of women and the legs of birds, with or without wings. More rarely they appear as birds with only the heads of women. They seem to have had a funereal significance, and were often represented on tombs. For ...