MUD-BEL, the amphibian Siren lacertina, which has persistent gills but no hind legs. It resembles the Proteidm (q.v.) in many ways. See Sramme.
the name of various fishes found in muddy water, or fond of burrowing in the ooze of swamps. The Nile bichir and its relatives, the reed-fishes of the slug gish African rivers, are so called; also the lepidosiren and other dipnoans, which grovel on muddy bottoms. In the United States, the name belongs to some small mud-minnows (q.v.), and to a curious fish (Amia calva) of the Mississippi Valley, known as dogfish, bow fin and by various other names. This, like the bichir and the reed-fish, is a ganoid (q.v.). It is a rather shapeless, dark-colored, exceed ingly hardy fish, reaching a length of two feet and a dozen pounds in weight. It is carnivorous, feeding voraciously upon crayfish, small mol lusks and anything it is able to seize and swallow; and it greedily seizes a baited hook and then fights gamely for its life, so that it is a favorite with anglers, though hardly fit to eat.
or a sports man's name for any of several rails, gallinules, coots and similar birds which make their home in marshes; it is most often given in the North to the Gallinule (Gailinula galeata), a bird of the rail family, much like the British water-hen (G. chloropus), and common in the marshes about the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley, where its cluckings resound in summer from every reedy marsh. It is about a foot in length, olive-brown on the back, dull black on the under parts and with a red bill. It is migratory; but the Southern States have a smaller and more handsome mud-hen in the resident purple gal linule (lonornis martinica).