CHAPTER III.— Order OPHIDIA. 

 SERPENTS. 



Prior to the publication of my Memoir on the Paltsophis in the ' Geological Trans- 

 actions,'* and my ' Report on British Fossil Reptiles,' f the sole notice of any fossil 

 belonging to the order of Serpents was contained in the following passage from the 

 Appendix to the concluding volume of the second edition of Baron Cuvier's great and 

 comprehensive work, the ' Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles.* After alluding to 

 the scarcity of the fossil remains of birds, the immortal author of that work proceeds 

 to say : " The bones of Serpents are still rarer, if it be possible. I have seen no 

 specimens of them, save the vertebrse from the osseous breccia of Cette, of which I 

 have spoken in the article on those breccia, and a single one from the fresh-water 

 deposits of the Isle of Sheppy.":}: 



We may perhaps gather the reason for the silence of Cuvier respecting the 

 relations of that vertebra and of the fossil vertebrse of Serpents in general to each 

 other, and to those of the existing species, from his brief notice of the Ophidian fossils 

 from the breccia of Cette ; where, after stating in general terms their resemblance in 

 form and figure to the vertebrse of the common harmless snake {Coluber natriw), he 

 proceeds to remark, " but it may well be conceived, that in a genus where the osteo- 

 logy of the species has so much simiUtude, it is not in isolated vertebrae that one can 

 discover specific characters." § If, however, this discouraging conclusion of the great 

 comparative anatomist should be countenanced by the results of a rigorous comparison 

 of the vertebrae of the dififerent species of Coluber, as that genus may be restricted by 

 modern naturalists, it is by no means borne out by such comparison of the vertebrae of 

 the species of the wider Linnean genus Coluber, and gives place to a very different 

 estimate of the value of vertebral characters, when these are studied in species of the 

 different Linnean genera of the ' Amphibia Serpentes' in the ' Systema Naturae.' 



Baron Cuvier having, conformably with his convictions, deemed it unnecessary to 

 give figures or to describe the vertebrae of Serpents, recent or fossil, in his ' Ossemens 

 Fossiles,' I am compelled to premise such observations on the anatomical construction 

 ot this part of the skeleton of those Reptiles as will render intelligible my description 



* Vol. vi, 2d series (1839), p. 209, pi. xxii. 



t Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, for 1841. 



X " Les OS de serpens sont encore plus rares, s'il est possible. Je n'en ai vu que des vertebras des 

 brfeches osseuses de Cette, dont j'ai parle a, I'article de ces breches, etuneseule des terrains d'eau douce de 

 I'ile de Sheppy." (Tom. v, pt. ii, p. 526, 1824.) 



§ " Mais on sent bien que, dans un genre ou Tosteologie des especes a tant de ressemblance, ce n'est 

 pas dans les vertebres isolees que Ton peut trouver les caracteres specifiques." (Op. cit., torn, iv, p. 180.) 



