HERPETOLOGY 



Bij KAEL P. SCHMIDT 



Chicago Natural History Museum 



Expanding herpetology/ like a branching tree, underwent development in 

 various directions in its new growth during the latter half of the last century and 

 the first half of the present one, and even within any one of these branches there 

 may be varied directions of interest that require some disentanglement. In the 

 present historical essay I have not attempted any unified arrangement, but have 

 followed the branches or the individual twigs of the tree of herpetology as they 

 have seemed important or interesting. 



Herpetology may be broadly interpreted as including every phase of biological 

 studies in which identifiable species or higher groups of amphibians and reptiles 

 appear, and is so interpreted here. Emphasis, however, is upon the history of 

 description and classification of the existing world fauna, which involves the story 

 of the exploration of the world for the several thousand species of amphibians 

 and i-eptiles. Most of the rise of our knowledge of the extinct members of these 

 two groups falls within the century 1850-1950, but this segment of our history 

 cannot be elaborated in the present essay. 



Emphasis on the field of systematics, the central trunk of our tree, carries 

 with it an interest in the natural histoiy of the amphibians and reptiles. Natural 

 history I interpret as the less critical forerunner of a more critical science of 

 ecology. Even without this modern development, the natural history of the crea- 

 tures in question has the merit of affording a base for the popular and semipopular 

 literature of herpetlogy, which brings its more seriously scientific studies into 

 the domain of knowledge of the general public and gives school children a key to 

 a segment of the zoological sciences. This department of herpetological literature 

 is peculiarly rich and requires some attention in a historical review. In addition 

 to systematics, geography, and general natural history, the principal develop- 

 ments in anatomy, physiology, embryology, and behavior are of major importance 

 to a broad view of the liistory of herpetology. Finally, within each of the separate 

 fields, historic interest focuses upon the personalities of the individuals who 

 initiated fruitful directions of investigation or dominated them. The principal 

 museums of the world have had pre-eminent roles in the growth of systematic 

 studies and in the exploration of the world for new species. Thus the hierarchies 

 and successions of the museum herpetologists become important. The fact that 



1. studies on amphibians are commonly combined with those on reptiles in the zoo- 

 logical subscience "Herpetology." These creatures compose respectively the class Am- 

 phibia and the class Reptilia, two of the major groups of backboned animals, which were 

 long combined in the Linnaean class Amphibia. The animals in question, the salamanders, 

 frogs, and caecilians (the living amphibians as now understood), and the turtles, croco- 

 dilians, lizards, snakes, and the tuatara (the existing reptiles), were all commonly lumped 

 together as reptiles in the popular mind and, for that matter, still are. The zoological 

 distinction between the Amphibia and the Reptilia, though fully established, had not yet 

 been properly carried through in general works at the middle of the nineteenth century. 



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