Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/452

Rh 434 REPTILES [HISTORY. (Testudo, with fourteen species). The second group com- prises the Lacertse, twenty-five in number, and includes the Salamander and Newts ; and the third the Serpentes, nine species, among which the Limbless Lizards are enumerated. .innseus. Except in so far as he made known and briefly char- acterized a number of Reptiles, our knowledge of this class was not advanced by LINNJSUS. His notions as to the relation of the various types among themselves and to the other vertebrates were the same as those of Ray, and the progress made by herpetology in the various editions of the Systema Naturx is therefore of a merely formal character. That Linnaeus associated in the 12th edition cartilaginous and other Fishes with the Reptiles under the name of Amphibia Nantes was the result of some misunderstanding of an observation by Garden, and is not to be taken as a premonitory token of the recent ^discoveries of the relation between Batrachians and Fishes. Linnaeus places Reptiles, which he calls Amphibia, as the third class of the animal kingdom ; he divides the genera thus : ORDER!. REPTILES. Testudo (15 species); Rana (17 sp.); Draco (2 sp. ) ; Lacerta (48 sp., including 6 Batrachians). ORDER 2. SERPENTES. Crotalus (5 species); Boa (10 sp.); Coluber (96 sp.) ; Anguis (15 sp.) ; Amphisb&na (2 sp.) ; Caecilia (2sp.). None of the naturalists who under the direction or influence of Linnaeus visited foreign countries possessed any special knowledge of or predilection for the study of Reptiles ; all, however, contributed to our acquaintance with tropical forms, or transmitted well-preserved speci- mens to the collections at home, so that GMELIN, in the 13th edition of the Systema Natures, was able to enumerate three hundred and seventy -one species. lurenti. The man who, with the advantage of the Linnsean method, first treated of Reptiles monographically, was LAURENTI. In a small book 1 he proposed a new division of these animals, of which some ideas and terms have sur- vived into our times, characterizing the orders, genera, and species in a much more precise manner than Linnaeus, giving, for his time, excellent descriptions and figures of the species of his native country. Laurenti might have become for herpetology what Artedi was for ichthyology, but his resources were extremely limited. He himself complains that he had no literary intercourse with foreign naturalists, and access to but a few works (he especially mentions Seba's Thesaurus) and one collection only. The circumstance that Chelonians are entirely omitted from his Synopsis seems due rather to the main object with which he engaged in the study of herpetology, viz., that of examining and distinguishing Reptiles reputed to be poisonous, and to want of material, than to his convic- tion that Tortoises should be relegated to another class. He divides then the class into three orders : 1. SALIENTIA, with the genera Pipa, Bufo, Rana, Hyla, and one species of " Proteus" viz., the larva of Pseudis paradoxa. GRADIENTIA, the three first genera of which are Tailed Batrach- ians, viz., two species of Proteus (one being the P. anguinus), Triton, and Salarnandra ; followed by true Saurians Caudiverbera, Gecko, Chamseleo, Iguana, Basiliscus, Draco, Cordylus, Crocodilus, Scincus, Stellio, Seps. 3. SERPENTIA, among which he continues to keep AmpMsbsena, G'secilia, and Anguis, but the large Linnaean genus Coluber is divided into twelve, chiefly from the scutellation of the head and form of the body. The work concludes with an account of the experiments made by Laurenti to prove the poisonous or innocuous nature of those Reptiles of which he could obtain living specimens. 1 Specimen medicum exhibens Synopsin Reptilium emendatam cum experimentis circa vtneni et antidota Reptilium Austriacorum, Vienna, 1768 (8vo, pp. 214, with 5 plates). The next general work on Reptiles is by LACEPDE. It appeared in the years 1788 and 1790 under the title Histoire Naturelle des Quadruples Ovipares et des Sei-pi'ita (Paris, 2 vols. 4to). Although as regards treatment of details and amount of information this work far surpasses the modest attempt of Laurenti, it shows no advance towards a more natural division and arrangement of the genera. The author depends entirely on conspicuous external characters, and classifies the Reptiles into (1) oviparous quadrupeds with a tail, (2) oviparous quad- rupeds without a tail, (3) oviparous bipeds (Chirotes and Pseudopus), (4) Serpents, an arrangement in which the old confusion of Batrachians and Reptiles and the imper- fect definition of Lizards and Snakes are continued, and which it is worthy of remark we find also adopted in Cuvier's Tableau filementaire de VHistoire Naturelle des Animaux (1798), and nearly so by LATREILLE in his Histoire Naturelle des Reptiles (Paris, 1801, 4 vols. 12 mo). Lacepede's monograph, however, remained for many years deservedly the standard work on Reptiles, on account of the ability with which the author collected all reliable information on the various species, and on account of the facilities which it afforded for determining them. The numerous plates with which the work is illustrated are, for the time, well drawn, and the majority readily recog- nizable. 3. The Period of Elimination of Batrachians as one of the Reptilian Orders. A new period for herpetology com- mences with ALEX. BRONGNIART, 2 who in 1799 first recog- nized the characters by which Batrachians differ from the other Reptiles, and by which they form a natural passage to the class of Fishes. Cxcilia (as also Langaha and Acrochordus) is left by Brongniart with hesitation in the order of Snakes, but Newts and Salamanders henceforth are no more classed with Lizards. He leaves the Batra- chians, however, in the class of Reptiles as the fourth order. The first order comprises the Chelonians, the second the Saurians (including Crocodiles and Lizards), the third the Ophidians terms which have been adopted by all succeeding naturalists. Here, however, Brongniart's merit on the classification of Reptiles ends, the definition and disposition of the genera remaining much the same as in the works of his predecessors. The activity in France in the field of natural science was at this period, in spite of the political disturbances, so great that only a few years after Lac6pede's work another, almost identical in scope and of the same extent, appeared, viz., the Histoire Naturelle Generale et Parti- culiere des Reptiles of F. M. DAUDIN (Paris, 1802-3, 8 vols. 8vo). Written and illustrated with less care than that by Lace"pede, it is of greater importance to the herpetologists of the present day, as it contains a consider- able number of generic and specific forms described for the first time. Indeed, at the end of the work, the author states that he has examined more than eleven hundred specimens, belonging to five hundred and seventeen species, all of which he has described from nature. The system adopted is that of Brongniart, giving to the work a character by which the modern herpetologist is most favourably impressed. The genera are well defined, but ill arranged ; it is, however, noteworthy that Csecilia takes now its place at the end of the Ophidians, and nearest to the succeeding order of Batrachians. The next step in the development of the herpeto- logical system was the natural arrangement of the genera. This involved a stupendous amount of labour ; by a careful thorough examination of all the types of Reptiles then known, reliable characters had to bo discovered, and by means of the principle of the subordination of 2 Bull. Acad. Sci., 1800, Nos. 35, 36. Brong iiiart. Dau<