HERPETOLOGY OF JAPAN AND ADJACENT 



TERRITORY. 



By Leonhard Stejneger, 

 Curator, Division of Reptiles and Batrachians, U. S. National Museum. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Until a comparatively recent date reptiles and amphibians were 

 generally considered members of the same class, intermediate between 

 the old class Pisces and the birds. True, the Amphibia were elevated 

 to class rank early in the last century, but the proposition was not 

 generally accepted until the subdivision of the vertebrates into 

 Anamnia and Amniota had been gaining ground. It is now generally 

 conceded that the Amphibia, or Batrachia, as they are often called, 

 are more nearly allied to the fishes, and the reptiles more so to the 

 birds than the two classes are among themselves, some authors even 

 going so far, and not without good reasons, as to include the reptiles 

 with the birds in the same class, Monocotylia. Yet, chiefly for the 

 same reasons which cause the Lancelets and the Lampreys to be 

 embraced with the true fishes in the term "ichthyology," the old 

 name for the study of the compound class Amphibia or Reptilia, 

 '4ierpetology," is still in common use, and in faunistic works, like the 

 present, the two classes are usually treated of together. 



Class AMPHIBIA. 



1758. Amphibia Linn^us, Syst. Nat., 10 ed., I, p. 194. 



1802. Batrachia Macartney, in Ross's Translat. Cuvier's Lect. Comp. Aiiat., 



I, tab. III. 



1803. Batrachii Daudin, Hist. Nat. Rept., V, tab. p. 8. 



1806. Batracii Dumeril, Zool. Anal., p. 90. 



1807. Calamity Link, Bcsclir. Nat. Samml. Rostock, II, p. 53. 



1813. Achelata Fischer, Zoognosia, 3 ed., I, p. 57. 



1814. Ranacea Wilbrand, Classif. Thiere, p. 117. 



1820. Nuda Hemprich, Grundr. Naturg., p. 111. 



1821. Dipnoa Leuckart, Isis, 1821, Litt. Anz., p. 259. 



1847. Malacopoda Mayer, Rheinl. und Westphal. Verhandl., VI (p. 177). 

 1855. Psilodcrma van der Hoeven, Handb. Diork., 2 ed., II, p.^: Ilandh. 

 Zool., II, p. 251. 



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