AXOLOTL, ax'il-15f1 (Mex., ((play in the waterD), a larval salamander regarded as edible. They are numerous in the lakes about the City of Mexico, are six to 10 inches long, and are prepared by either roasting or boiling and eaten with vinegar or cayenne pepper. The most extraordinary thing about them, however, is the fact that they are the young of a species of terrestrial salamander (Amblystoma figrinum), well known all over the warmer parts of the United States and Mexico, which in these lakes never transform into adults, but remain per manently in the larval condition, yet become sexually mature when about six months old, so that they are able to breed. This astonishing fact was long unknown. The axolotl has bushy, external gillssimilar to those which per manently characterize the mud-puppy. It was regarded as a distinct animal, and named Siredon lichenoides. The discovery of the
truth was made accidentally in Paris in 1865, when some axolotls in an aquarium in the Jardin des Plantes lost their gills and were transformed into perfected amblystomas. A lady, studying in the University of Freiburg, Fri. Marie von Chauvin, then undertook a series of careful experiments with other captives, and worked out the complete history of meta morphosis, which is dependent (at least in Europe) on a very narrow set of favorable circumstances, but differs in no essential degree from that of other salamanders (q.v.). Why the change never takes place in the Mexican lakes is unexplained. The theories in regard to it, and the detailed history of the observa tions above mentioned, are given by Gadow in