428 Progress of Natural History^ 



may be regarded as fabulous in the narratives and descriptions 

 of travellers in distant countries, at a period when the most 

 enlightened were comparatively ignorant of natural history ; 

 and he has tried to identify those animals with those inscribed 

 by modern naturalists in their catalogues ; and, in doing 

 which, he has obtained some new and interesting results. The 

 same aujthor, in conjunction with M. Valenciennes, has pub- 

 lished the first three volumes of their great work on ichthyo- 

 logy. The first contains the history of the science, and a 

 general and detailed account of the organisation of fishes. 

 The second begins with the family of perches, and contains 

 the descriptions of 245 species, divided into 20 genera. The 

 third volume terminates this family, and contains 182 species, 

 divided into 32 genera. These volumes are accompanied by 

 figures of 63 species, and eight large anatomical plates. 



Among the works devoted to the representation of natural 

 history in different countries, that of M. Audubon, on the 

 birds of South America, surpasses all others both in colouring 

 and engraving. The plates are the largest ever yet published, 

 for the eagles and the tetraos are all the size of life, and when 

 the bird is not large enough to fill the paper, it is represented 

 in its various attitudes. M. Audubon's is a work in which 

 the Academy, in common with all the friends of science, take 

 a deep interest, and they with pleasure see the naturalists of 

 the New World profiting so amply by the instruction they 

 have derived from a more ancient source. 



Two memoirs have been read to the Academy on the dis- 

 tinguishing characters and natural history of lizards, one of 

 which was written by M. Dugez, and the other by M. Milne 

 Edwards. In the first, the author sets forth some anatomical 

 observations on the nervus accessorius, and states his convic- 

 tion that these animals breathe like frogs ^d tortoises, by a sort 

 of deglutition of the air, facilitated by suckers or valves placed 

 at the orifice of the nostrils, and especially by the six cornua 

 of their os hyoides, which support and move the pharynx. 

 M. Dugez has also studied the phenomenon of the reproduc- 

 tion of the tail, in which the last vertebrae are constantly re- 

 placed by a tubular cartilage, in which the spinal marrow is 

 prolonged. This memoir terminates with a particular descrip- 

 tion of six indigenous species, observed by the author at dif- 

 ferent periods of growth, by which observation he has been 

 enabled to recognise, among those supposed to be distinct 

 species, the young ones of others : as the Zacerta lepida of 

 Daudin, which, when aged, assumes the characters of the ia- 

 certa ocellata ; the Xacerta viridis, which becomes like the 



