remains, Pterodactylus, Mosasaurus, Iguanodon, Ichthyosaurus, Teleosaurus, became the subjects of Cuvier's classical treatises, which form the contents of the 5th volume (part 2) of his Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, où l'on rétablit les caractères des plusieurs animaux dont les révolutions du globe ont détruit les espèces (new ed., Paris, 1824, 4to). V
All the succeeding herpetologists adopted either Oppel's or Cuvier's view as to the number of orders of reptiles, or as to Blainville. the position Batrachians ought to take in their relation to reptiles proper, with the single exception of D. de Blainville. He divided the “oviparous subtype” of Vertebrates into four classes, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians and Fishes,[1] a modification of the system which is all the more significant as he designates the reptiles “Squammifères Ornithoides, écailleux,” and the amphibians “Nudipellifères, Ichthyoides nus.” In these terms we perceive clear indications of the relations which exist to the class of birds on the one hand, and to that of fishes on the other; but, unfortunately, Blainville himself did not follow 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 classification) had been placed as one of the families of Saurians, now commence to be separated Merrem. from them. Merrem (Versuch eines Systems der Amphibien, Marburg, 1820, 8vo) distinguishes two classes of “Amphibians,” Pholidota and Batrachia.
The Pholidota (or Reptiles) are divided into three orders, distinguished chiefly by osteological and splanchnological characters:—
- Testudinata.
- Loricata ( = Crocodiles).
- Squamata ( = Oppel's Squamata, excluding Crocodiles).
Merrem's subdivision of the Squamata into (1) Gradientia ( = limbed Lacertilia), (2) Repentia ( = limbless Lacertilia), (3) Serpentia ( = Snakes and Amphisbaena), (4) Incedentia ( = Chirotes), an (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.
Latreille, who commenced the study of reptiles as early as 1801, had kept pace with the progress of science when he Latreille. published, in 1825, his Familles naturelles du règne 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 Chelonians. 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 Gray. combination founded on such important characters except J. E. Gray, who, however, destroyed Latreille's idea of Cataphracta by adding the Amphisbaenians[2] as a third order.
A mass of new materials now began to accumulate from all parts of the world in European museums. Among others, Spix had brought from Brazil a rich spoil to the Munich Museum, Wagler. and the Bavarian Academy charged Joh. Wagler to prepare a general system of reptiles and batrachians. His work,[3] the result of ten years' labour, is a simple but lasting monument to a young naturalist,[4] who, endowed with an ardent imagination, only too frequently misinterpreted 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 analogical 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. We must admit that he 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?) by the parents.” By the last character this Waglerian class is distinguished from the reptiles.
Reptiles (in which Wagler includes Batrachians) are divided into eight orders: Testudines, Crocodili, Lacertae, Serpentes, Angues, Caeciliae, Ranae 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, Wagler entirely failed in arranging snakes in natural families, venomous and non—venomous types being mixed in the majority of his groups.
L. Fitzinger was Wagler's contemporary; his first work[5] preceded Wagler's system by four years. As he says in the Fitzinger. preface, his object was to arrange the reptiles in “a natural system.” 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 Caecilia to Amphisbaena. At the top Draco leads through Pterodactylus 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, Plesiosaurus, Saurocephalus and Ichthyosaurus. In the order Squamata Lacertilians 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 Agamoids are sadly mixed, Pterodactyles and Draco forming one family; Megalosaurus, Mosasaurus, Varanus, Tejus, &c., are associate in another named Ameivoidea; the Amphisbaenidae are correctly defined; the Colubroidea are a heterogeneous 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.
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 zoological nomenclature. The labours of Wiegmann, Müller, Duméril and Bibron exercised no influence on him, and when he commenced to publish a new system of reptiles in 1843,[6] of which fortunately one fasciculus only appeared, he exhibited a classification in which morphological facts are entirely superseded by fanciful ideas of the vaguest kind of physiosophy, each class of vertebrates being divided
- ↑ Bull. Sci. Soc. Philomat., July 1816.
- ↑ Catalogue of the Tortoises, Crocodiles and Amphisbaenians in the Collection of the British Museum (London, 1844, 16mo), p. 2.
- ↑ Natürliches System der Amphibien mit vorangehender Classification der Säugethiere und Vögel—ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Zoologie (Munich, 1830, 8vo).
- ↑ Wagler was accidentally killed three years after the publication of his System.
- ↑ Neue Classification der Reptilien nach ihren natürlichen Verwandtschaften (Vienna, 1826, 4to).
- ↑ Systema Reptilium (Vienna, 1843, 8vo).
