Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/454

Rh 436 REPTILES [HISTORY. up the ideas thus expressed, and abandoned even the terms in a later edition of his systematic tables. The direct or indirect influence of the work of French anatomists manifested itself in the systems of the other herpetologists of this period. The Crocodiles, especially, which hitherto (strange to say, even in Cuvier's classifica- tion) had been placed as one of the families of Saurians, rrem. now commence to be separated from them. MERREM (Versueh eines Systems der Amphibien, Marburg, 1820, 8vo) distinguishes two classes of "Amphibians," Pko- lidota and Batrachia. The Pholidota (or Reptiles) are divided into three orders, dis- tinguished chiefly by osteological and splanchnological characters: 1. TESTUDINATA ; 2. LORICATA ( = Crocodiles) ; 3. SQUAMATA ( = Oppel's Squamata, excluding Crocodiles). Merrem's subdivision of the Squamata into (1) Gradientia ( = limbed Lacertilia), (2) Kepentia ( = limbless Lacertilia), (3) Serpentia ( = Snakes and Amphisbsena), (4) Incedentia ( = Chirotes), and (5) Predentia ( -= Chamaeleons) was based chiefly on* the modifications of the limbs, and not adopted by his successors. The greater part of his work is occupied with a synopsis of all the species of Reptiles known, each being shortly characterized by a diagnosis ; but, as only a small proportion (about one hundred and seventy) were known to him from autopsy, this synopsis has all the faults of a compilation. reille. LATREILLE, who commenced the study of. Reptiles as early as 1801, had kept pace with the progress of science when he published, in 1825, his Families Naturelles du Regne Animal (Paris, 1825, 8vo). He separated the Batrachians as a class from the Reptiles, and the latter he divides into two sections only, Cataphracta and Squamosa, in the former Crocodiles being associated with the Che- lonians. He bases this view on the development of a carapace in both, on the structure of the feet, on the fixed quadrate bone, on the single organ of copulation. None of the succeeding herpetologists adopted a combination y. founded on such important characters except J. E. GRAY, who, however, destroyed Latreille's idea of Cataphracta by adding the Amphisbsenians x as a third order. Cuvier's account of the genera and species of Reptiles in the Regne Animal was too succinct, and Merrem's bore too much the character of a compilatory list, to furnish efficient aid in the arrangement of the mass of new materials which began to accumulate from all parts of the world in European museums. Among others, Spix had brought from his travels in Brazil a rich spoil to the Munich gler. Museum, and the Bavarian Academy charged JOH. WAGLER, who was engaged in working out these materials, to pre- pare a general system of Reptiles and Batrachians. His work, 2 the result of ten years' labour, is a simple but lasting monument to a young naturalist, 3 who, endowed with an ardent imagination, only too frequently misin- terpreted the evidence of facts, or forced it into the service of preconceived ideas. Cuvier had drawn attention to certain resemblances in some parts of the osseous structure of Ichthyosaurus and Pterodactylus to Dolphins, Birds, Crocodiles, &c. Wagler, seizing upon such ana- logical resemblances, separated those extinct Saurians from the class of Reptiles, and formed of them and the Monotremes a distinct class of Vertebrates, intermediate between Mammals and Birds, which he called Gryphi. When we consider that the discovery of the mode of pro- pagation of the Monotremes is probably reserved for the present decennium, and that the propagation of those extinct Reptiles may remain an unsolved mystery, we must 1 Catalogue of the Tortoises, Crocodiles, and Amphisbaenians in the Collection of the British Museum, London, 1844, 16mo, p. 2. 8 JfatUrliches System der A mphibien mit vorangehender Classifica- tion der Sdugethiere und Vogel, ein Bettrag zur vergleichenden Zoologie, Munich, 1830, 8vo. 8 Wagler was accidentally killed three years after the publication of his System. admit that Wagler has made free use of his imagination by defining his class of Gryphi as " vertebrates with lungs lying free in the pectoral cavity; oviparous; development of the embryo (within or) without the parent ; the young fed (or suckled 1) by the parents. " By the last character this Waglerian class is distinguished from the Reptiles. Reptiles (in which Wagler includes Batrachians) ar divided into eight orders : Testudines, Crocodili, Lacertx, Serpentes, Angues, Caecilix, Ramz, and Ichthyodi. He has great merit in having employed, for the subdivision of the families of Lizards, the structure of the tongue and the mode of insertion of the teeth in the jaws. On the other hand, however well the genera of Snakes are defined by him and their number has been increased to ninety-six Wagler has entirely failed in arranging them in natural families, venomous and non-venomous types being mixed in the majority of his groups. L. FITZINGER was Wagler's contemporary ; his first Fitzingei work 4 preceded Wagler's system by four years. As he says in the preface, his object was to arrange the Reptiles in " a natural system, a system in which the objects are arranged in accordance with their greatest similarity, with their natural affinities. Such a system is a faithful image of the gradual progress of nature, expressed in words." Unfortunately, in order to attain this object, Fitzinger paid regard to the most superficial points of resemblance; and in the tabula affinitatum generum which he constructed to demonstrate " the progress of nature " he has been much more successful in placing closely allied generic forms in contiguity than in tracing the relationships of the higher groups. That table is prepared in the form of a genealogical tree, but Fitzinger wished to express thereby merely the amount of morphological resemblance, and there is no evidence whatever in the text that he had a clear idea of genetic affinity. The Batrachians are placed at the bottom of the scheme, leading through Hyla to the Geckos (clearly on account of the digital dilatations) and through Ctecilia to Amphisbsena. At the top Draco leads through Ptero- dactylus to the Bats (Pteropus), Ichthyosaurus to the Cetaceans (Delphinus), Emys to the Monotremes, Testudo to Manis, and the Marine Turtles to the Divers and Penguins. In Fitzinger's system the higher groups are, in fact, identical with those proposed by Merrem, while greater originality is shown in the subdivision of the orders. He differed also widely from Wagler in his views as to the relations of the extinct forms. The order of Loricata consists of two families, the Ichthyosauroidea and Crocodiloidea, the former comprising Iguanodon, Flesiosaurus, Saurocephalus, and Ichthyosaurus. In the order Squamata Lacer- tilians and Ophidians are combined and divided into twenty-two families, almost all based on the most conspicuous external characters : the first two, viz., the Geckos and Chameleons, are natural enough, but in the three following Iguanoids and Agarnoids are sadly mixed, Pterodactyles and Draco forming one family ; Megalosaurus, Mosasaurus, Varamis, Tcjus, &c., are associated in another named Ameivoidca ; the Amphisbeenidx are correctly denned ; the Colubroidea are a heterogenous assemblage of thirty genera ; but with his family of Bungaroidea Fitzinger makes an attempt to separate at least a part of the venomous Colubrine Snakes from the Viperines, which again are differentiated from the last family, that of Crotaloidea. There is sufficient evidence in this early publication that Fitzinger had at that time a good eye for seizing upon those characters by which the creation of small groups, such as genera, is regulated, and if this little work had been his only performance in the field of herpetology his name would have been honourably mentioned among his fellow-workers. But the promise of his early labours was not justified by his later work, and if we take notice of the latter here it is only because his name has become attached to many a Reptile through the pedantic rules of 4 Jfeue Classification der Reptilien nock ihren natiirlichen Ver- wandtschaften, Vienna, 1826, 4to.