594 ^ CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



to the production of 95 of the 101 plates in the accompanying atlas. Since he 

 illustrated many of the type specimens from other collections and other museums, 

 this great work remains one of the basic sources for studies on the Central Amer- 

 ican region. The amphibian section, with twenty-one plates, is by Paul Brocchi, 

 and the reptile section was completed by Mocquard, the last six plates being by 

 Fernand Angel. 



Another direction of interest in herpetological studies in France may be seen 

 in the continued attention to the fauna of France itself. As this became well 

 explored as to systematics and geographic distribution, there arose opportunity 

 for detailed attention to problems of life history and behavior. Leaders in this 

 important reorientation of interests were Fernand Lataste, most important in 

 herpetological history as the mentor of G. A. Boulenger, and Raymond Rollinat, 

 who will be remembered for his fifty-year-long interest in La vie des reptiles 

 (1934). Partly as a result of the long history of technical herpetological studies 

 in France, the popular and semipopular literature of herpetology in the French 

 language is particularly rich. 



In the decades following the appearance of the Erpetologie general the pres- 

 tige of leadership in systematic herpetology passed from Paris to London and 

 Berlin. At Berlin the scientific productivity of Wilhelm Carl Hartwig Peters 

 (b. 1815, d. 1883) spanned three decades of active publication during his regime 

 as Professor of Zoology at the University of Berlin and Director of the Zoological 

 Museum. His career began with an important personal zoological expedition to 

 Africa, the Reise nach Mossamhique, which extended from 1842 to 1848. Like 

 most of his contemporaries, he was equally interested in various groups of ani- 

 mals, often combining the descriptions of new species of mammals and amphib- 

 ians, or of snakes and fishes, and describing collections from three or four of the 

 continents in the same paper. After his. return from Africa a steady stream of 

 short papers, mostly descriptions of new species, came from his pen in every 

 year until his last. The first of the five great folio volumes of the reports on the 

 Beise nach Mossamhique appeared in 1852, the last in 1882. Of these the volumes 

 on mammals, fishes, and amphibians- were by Peters himself. 



Great collections of fishes, amphibians, and reptiles were meanwhile accumu- 

 lating at the museum of natural history in Vienna, where the leadership in ichthy- 

 ology and herpetology had fallen to Franz Steindachner (b. 1834, d. 1919). 

 Steindachner, though more eminent in ichthyology, founded an Austrian school 

 of herpetologists. He joined the staff of the Naturhistorisches Museum in 1860, 

 and his publications in herpetology continue from 1862 to 1917. His papers 

 include, with numerous short notes and descriptions, the reports on the collec- 

 tions of the Austrian Novara Expedition (1867) , and quarto papers on collections 

 made by himself in Africa, southwestern Asia, Brazil, and the Galapagos Islands. 



Before we return to the main thread of the development of herpetological 

 studies (in London), other direct derivatives of the Paris school may be men- 

 tioned. The Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences, and the Museum of Natural 

 History in St. Petersburg became centers of herpetological publication under 

 the regime of Alexander Strauch (b. 1832, d. 1893). Strauch was born in St. 



2. Boulenger remarks that Peters was the last important herpetologist to employ the 

 Linnaean class Amphibia in its comprehensive sense, to include both amphibians and 

 reptiles. 



