Siren, a North American long-tailed batra-chian, with stout eel-like body, naked skin, persistent branchiae, and only the two anterior legs. The best known species, the S. lacertina (Linn.), or mud eel, has a small and short head, with elevated forehead and depressed and truncated snout, three branchial tufts, and three spiracles on each side; the mouth is small, with distinct lips, and arrow-shaped tongue free at the tip and sides; no teeth in the upper jaw, but a broad band of very minute ones along the outer border of the palate bones; nostrils and eyes small, the latter black; the tail laterally compressed, with a rayless fin above and below; limbs with four short and small fingers with horny tips. It attains a length of from 2 to 3 ft., and is dusky above with numerous whitish spots, and purplish below; it lives chiefly in the mud and muddy water of the Carolina rice fields, and occasionally comes on land. Its food consists of worms, insects, and the eggs of fish and frogs; it is found from lat. 35° N. to E. Florida. In this group there are about 90 vertebras, connected by conical cavities filled with a gelatinous substance, as in fishes; eight pairs of short ribs, of which the first pair is attached to the second vertebra; no trace of pelvis; three cartilaginous branchial arches attached to an osseous tongue bone; the lungs two long sacs, accessory to the gills, but, as in the menobranchus, insufficient for respiration.

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Sirens (Gr. σειρήνες, from σειράειν, to draw, to entice), mythical female beings who enchanted the listeners to their song, and after getting them into their power destroyed them. In the legends of the Argonauts they are said to have endeavored to entice those wanderers, but Orpheus surpassed them in singing; thereupon they threw themselves into the sea, and were changed into rocks, as it had been fated that they were not to live after any one passed by them unaffected. In Homer the sirens are connected with the voyage of Ulysses, who, preparatory to sailing by the islands on which they were sitting, by the advice of Circe plugged the ears of his companions with wax and fastened himself to the mast of the vessel, until he was out of the sound of their voices. The island in Homer's account was between Aeaea and the rock of Scylla, in the strait of Messina; but the Roman poets place them near the shore of Campania, in the island of Capreae (Capri) or in the Sirenusian islands near Pass-turn. They were called daughters of Phorcus, of Achelous and Sterope, of Terpsichore, of Melpomene, of Calliope, or of Gaea. While Homer mentions only two sirens, the later traditions assume that there were three, and sometimes four.

In later times they were represented as birds with the face of a woman. -See Schrader, Die Sirenen im Alterthum (Berlin, 1868).