arthworks and
hill-fortresses in the neighbourhood indicate a very early settlement.
There is a tradition that the battle of Brunanburh was fought in the valley
of the Axe, and that the bodies of the Danish princes who perished in
action were buried in Axminster church. According to Domesday, Axminster
was held by the king. In 1246 Reginald de Mohun, then lord of the manor,
founded a Cistercian abbey at Newenham within the parish of Axminster,
granting it a Saturday market and a fair on Midsummer day, and the next
year made over to the monks from Beaulieu the manor and hundred of
Axminster. The abbey was dissolved in 1539. The midsummer fair established
by Reginald de Mohun is still held.

See _Victoria County History--Devon_; James Davidson, _British and Roman
Remains in the Vicinity of Axminster_ (London, 1833).

AXOLOTL, the Mexican name given to larvae salamanders of the genus
_Amblystoma_. It required the extraordinary acumen of the great Cuvier at
once to recognize, when the first specimens [v.03 p.0069] of the _Gyrinus
edulis_ or _Axolotl_ of Mexico were brought to him by Humboldt in the
beginning of the 19th century, that these Batrachians were not really
related to the Perennibranchiates, such as _Siren_ and _Proteus_, with
which he was well acquainted, but represented the larval form of some
air-breathing salamander. Little heed was paid to his opinion by most
systematists, and when, more than half a century later, the axolotl was
found to breed in its branchiferous condition, the question seemed to be
settled once for all against him, and the genus _Siredon_, as it was called
by J. Wagler, was unanimously maintained and placed among the permanent
gill-breathers.

It seemed impossible to admit that an animal which lives for years without
losing its gills, and is able to propagate in that state, could be anything
but a perfect form. And yet subsequent discoveries, which followed in rapid
succession, have established that _Siredon_ is but the larval form of the
salamander _Amblystoma_, a genus long known from various parts of North
America; and Cuvier's conclusions now read much better than they did half a
century after they were published. Before reviewing the history of these
discoveries, it is desirable to say a few words of the characters of the
axolotl (larval form) and of the _Amblystoma_ (perfect or imago form).

The axolotl has been known to the Mexicans from the remotest times, as an
article of food