SCHMIDT: HERPETOLOGY 625 



and warning behavior involve the assessment of the function of venoms, especially 

 in relation to mimicry and coloration. Sense perception and orientation have 

 been studied in relation to food capture and to such phenomena as the movement 

 of hatching seaturtles to water. The problem of isolating mechanisms between 

 species (voice in frogs, for example) involves restudy of the so-called taxonomic 

 characters in order to find out what they mean. Especially significant studies on 

 the physiological isolation of the .species of frogs and of populations of a single 

 species have been made by John A. Moore (b. 1927) of Barnard College. 



An ecological framew^ork for studies of animal distribution was outlined by 

 Richard Hesse in 1924 {TiergeograpJiie auf oekologischer Grundlage, Amer. ed. 

 1951). A framework by means of which past and future studies on the ecology of 

 reptiles and amphibians can be brought into relation and correlation with other 

 studies is provided by C. W. Allee, et al., Princi'ples of Animal Ecology (1949). 



At the midcentury the study of amphibians and reptiles may be seen to be 

 in need of a world synthesis, perhaps a more elaborate one than that of the cata- 

 logues of the British Museum two generations earlier, but still essentially a sys- 

 tematic review. A review of the existing systematics of these groups should serve 

 as a springboard from which the new systematics can be explored and applied, 

 involving the reassessment of the classification from class to subspecies and 

 population in the light of the advances in biology as a whole. The review envis- 

 aged would then be the basis also of a neiv natural history, in which studies of 

 life histories and habits and behavior are brought into relation with comparative 

 functional anatomy. The new systematics and the new anatomy are essential to 

 the interpretation of the still growing body of knowledge of the extinct forms of 

 both amphibians and reptiles. We thus envisage a major contribution from her- 

 petology to an understanding of the evolution of the animal kingdom, with its 

 vast perspective in time and its broad ramifications in the present, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Ar.Assiz, Elizabeth Gary 



1886. Louis Agassiz, His Life and Gorrespondence. 2 vols., illus. Boston: Houghton, 

 Mifflin Go. 



Anonymous 



1870. Dumeril (Andre-Marie Gonstant). Grand Larousse, 6:1379. 

 1874. Peters (Guillaume-Gharles Hartwig). Grand Larousse, 12:703-704. 

 1931. Miss Joan Proctor. The London Times, Sept. 21, 1931. 

 1941. G. K. Noble. Gopeia, vol. for 1940, pp. 274-275, portr. 



1951. Sherman C. Bishop, 1887-19.^1. Proc. Rochester Acad. Sci., Vol. 6 [portr. and 

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Eaubour, Thomas 



1919. Boulenger, the man and his work. Nat. Hist., 19:566-567, portr. 



1943. Naturalist at Large, xii + 314 pp., illus. Boston: Little, Brown and Go. 



Bakdeleben, Karl 



1894. Joseph Hyrtl. Anat. Anz., 9:773-776. 



Bertin, Leon 



1939. Gatalogue des types de poissons du Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle. Ire 

 pte. Gyclostomes et Selaciens. Bull. Mus. Natl. Hist., Nat, s6t. 2, 11:51-98 

 [Historique des collections ichthyologiques du Museum, pp. 51-63]. 



