210 MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES. 



changes to lungs as the animals become terrestrial in their habits; others, 

 again, as the crocodile, which live both under water and on land, possess 

 permanent gills as well as lungs, while others are provided with lungs 

 only. These organs, though they resemble those met with in the higher 

 vertebrata, yet are not so fully developed as in them, and besides this 

 they differ materially in another respect, the tracheae or tubes, through 

 which the air is brought to the lungs, are in reptiles never divided into 

 branchial ramifications, as in birds and fishes, but terminate abruptly by 

 one or more orifices. The circulatory system is more fully developed 

 than that of the last class, and the heart in the three higher orders 

 consists of three cavities, two large auricles, and a ventricle, but in the 

 lowest order it approximates intimately to that of fishes. In the devel- 

 opment of the generative apparatus also we find an approximation to 

 that of fishes in the lowest genera, which gradually approaches in the 

 higher succeeding orders the type met with in birds. The eyes of reptiles 

 present but few peculiarities of structure, but in the higher tribes we 

 meet for the first time with eyelids, some of which present a very com- 

 plex construction, and also lachrymal glands. The nasal apparatus presents 

 an important difference to that of fishes. The nostrils of the latter are 

 mere blind cavities, but, in the class we are now considering, we find a 

 communication established between the nasal cavities and the larynx, which 

 most materially increases the sense of smell. The ear of the higher 

 reptiles is also more fully developed, and possesses a tympanic cavity 

 and a thin membranous drum, but in the lower genera this organ is 

 still very like that of fishes. With regard to the nervous system, it is 

 as in all other cases, necessarily increased with the gradual organic 

 development of the class, the cerebral hemispheres being proportionately 

 enlarged in comparison with those of fishes, in the rates of increase of 

 power in the various component organs of the body. 

 Uppingham, June 3rd., 1857. 



(To be continued.) 



fflsabtewm JMim. 



Ornithology in the House of Commons. — It must be a good omen for 

 the progress of ornithology, when no fewer than three references to the 

 subject are made in a single speech in the ( 'House;" such is the fact. In 

 the speech of Mr. Disraeli, on the 27th. ult., on the condition of India, he 

 remarks that a previous speaker had called him the Stormy Petrel of Indian 

 affairs, for that he never made a speech on them except when they were 

 in a disastrous state. He then compares Lord John Russell to the Halcyon 

 brooding on the waters; and again talks of the "Constitutional platitudes" 



