124 ox THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF SERPENTS. 



rated from each other, to be included in two well character- 

 ized families. 



The nature of the system recently published by the late 

 M. Wagler defies all analysis ; always led astray by the 

 sallies of an ardent imagination, often guided by principles 

 which should ever be strangers to science, anticipating the 

 spirit of the age, this laborious zoologist has created a system 

 in which the venomous and harmless serpents are huddled 

 together pell-mell, — the sea-snakes with the terrestrial, the 

 fresh-water species with tree-serpents — a system supported 

 by diffuse but specious reasoning, often forced, and more 

 lively than just ; a system with a crowd of new-invented 

 divisions, the number of which alone makes the most tena- 

 cious memory tremble. The same \mter has been use- 

 ful by the publication of Herpetologieal Plates. 



It remains for me to mention M. Lenz, who has studied 

 even in the minutest details the manners and habits of In- 

 digenous Serpents. I have often had recourse to the scien- 

 tific observations of this naturalist, which are contained in 

 a General Natural History of Serpents, written in a 

 popular and often diffuse style, but w^hich shews that the 

 author is more fiimiliar with the literature of this part of 

 science than with the objects themselves. 



I omit many other attempts by anatomists or by philo- 

 sophers to establish natural systems of ophiology : suffice it 

 to quote, as an example of Essays of this sort, the memoir 

 of M. RiETGEN, inserted in the 14th Volume, Second 

 Part, p. 245, of Transactions of the Leopoldine Academy. 

 Many other Savans, in short, have contributed to the pro- 

 gress of ophiology, by publishing isolated observations. 

 Travellers have enriched their journals by numerous scat- 

 tered remarks, relating to the manners of serpents, in which 

 they have described unedited species : to this number be- 

 long Pallas, Hasselquist, Forskal, Bruce, Bartram, 

 Bosc, Palisot de Beauvais, Paterson, Bussel, Madler 

 Merian, Maregrav, Mikan, Baddi, the Prince of 

 Neuwied, Spix, Say, Davy, White, Lesson, Wiegmann, 

 and several others which we have mentioned in speaking 

 of their works. Other naturalists have applied themselves 



