SCHMIDT: HERPETOLOGY 595 



Petersburg, came to the Zoological Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences 

 in 1861, and became its director in 1879. His papers (all in German) in the 

 Memoirs and Bulletin of the Academy (1862-1892) included revisions of the 

 crocodilians, turtles, and viperine snakes of the world. Strauch's successor in 

 herpetological studies was A. M. Nikolsky, whose first paper appeared in 1886, 

 with comprehensive accounts (in Russian) of the amphibians and reptiles of the 

 Russian Empire in 1915-1918 {Faune de la Russie). Jacques de Bedriaga (Rus- 

 sianized to Yakov Vladimirovitch Bedryagha; born in 1854, publishing career 

 1874-1912) interested himself especially in the herpetology of the JMediterranean 

 region, of Europe generally, and at last of Mongolia. His account of the frogs 

 and salamanders of Europe, Die lurch fauna Europas (1889-1897), is a com- 

 prehensive treatment of the fauna, though it suffers by comparison with Boulen- 

 ger's magnificently illustrated work on the Tailless Batrachians of the same region. 

 Bedriaga 's reports on the amphibians and reptiles of the Przewalski Expeditions 

 to Central Asia amount to more than seven hundred pages (with parallel Russian 

 and German text), and ten plates. 



In Italy the wealth of lacertid lizards, whose suitability for pets in terraria 

 has always been a source of herpetological interest in Europe, and the somewhat 

 richer Mediterranean fauna in general, gave rise to an early and continuing 

 interest in herpetology, and to one of the earliest elaborate accounts of a regional 

 fauna. The "Amfibi" (both amphibians and reptiles) constituting C. L. Bona- 

 parte's Volume II of his Iconografia della Fauna Italica . . . , (1832-1841), con- 

 temporary with the early volumes of the Erpetologie generate, depicted the am- 

 phibians and reptiles of Italy on 53 colored plates. The review of the Italian 

 herpetological fauna was redone by Lorenzo Camerano between 1883 and 1891. 

 The tradition of such national faunal works continues to the present day. 



The director of the Museum of Natural History in Milan, Georg Jan (b. 1791, 

 d. 1866), undertook the ambitious project of illustrating the snakes of the world. 

 The coverage of this work was unhappily reduced by the refusal of the British 

 Museum to lend its specimens to be drawn; but the 300 plates drawn and litho- 

 graphed in uniform style by Ferdinand Sordelli (who completed the work after 

 Jan's death) remain one of the monumental contributions to the illustration of 

 the snakes of the world. The Iconographie generale des opkidiens was published 

 in 50 livraisons, each with six plates (1860-1881). 



Opportunities for zoological exploration, often with governmental support, 

 were presented in the foreign colonies of European nations, and these may domi- 

 nate the herpetological interests of a national group. Such colonial exploitation 

 is exemplified in the contributions of J. V. Barboza clu Bocage (b. 1823, d. 1895), 

 Director of the Portuguese National Museum in Lisbon, whose publishing career 

 began in 1864 and was climaxed by his volume H erpetologie d' Angola et du Congo, 

 published in the last year of his life. 



The Era of GiJNTHER and Boulenger 



Reserving other developments in herpetology in various parts of the world 

 and the early history of the field in the United States for later sections, we must 

 turn to the dramatic transfer of leadership in the study of amphibians and rep- 

 tiles from the Continent to Great Britain, and in particular to the British Museum 



