374 Bibliographical Notice. 
The undoubtedly venomous qualities of some snakes, coupled perhaps 
with the peculiarly insidious, gliding movements of all the Ophidians, 
have given the whole of those remarkable reptiles a bad name, which, 
as in the case of the proverbial dog, is very nearly equivalent to 
hanging ; and this has been extended by popular prejudice to ali 
reptiles, which accordingly lie under a sort of ban in the imaginations 
of the ignorant, and not unfrequently suffer persecution in conse- 
quence. 
In the little volume now before us, Mr. Cooke has manfully done 
battle in behalf of this much maligned class of animals, showing, what 
indeed is well enough known to naturalists, that of all our British 
reptiles the common viper is the only one that has the slightest claim 
to the possession of those redoubtable poisoned weapons which render 
many of the exotic species so formidable ; whilst of the others 
the toad alone can be charged, with some show of reason, with pro- 
ducing injurious effects by means of the acrid secretion of the surface 
ofits body, when this is applied to wounds in the skin. All the rest 
are harmless, and, as Mr. Cooke well shows, often highly interesting 
in their habits and mode of life ; and he has certainly done good service 
in the popularizing of natural history, by producing so pleasant and 
instructive an account of our native members of a class so generally 
regarded with unmixed aversion. 
After a short account of the general characteristics of reptiles, and 
of the singular superstitions connected with what are called snake- 
stones, Mr. Cooke describes the British species of the class in sys- 
tematic order, commencing, however, with the Lizards, and placing 
the Chelonians in a supplementary chapter, as being only occasional 
visitors to our coasts. Among the true reptiles we find two additions 
to our list,—one the Smooth Snake (Coronella levis), the claim of 
which to be regarded as a British reptile may now be considered 
settled ; the other the Green or Guernsey Lizard (Lacerta viridis), 
the introduction of which does not appear to rest on such good evi- 
dence. The Edible Frog also makes its appearance in the list, but 
evidently, even in the author’s opinion, as a very doubtful native ; 
and the additions to the limited series of British reptiles are con- 
cluded by Dr. Gray’s Banded Newt (Ommatotriton vittatus, Gray), 
the distinctness of which from the other British Newts is shown by 
means of woodcut outlines of the skulls of all the four species, 
copied from the memoir of Dugés.. After all, the total number of 
species cited, including the two Chelonians, is only seventeen. 
These are all well described, and respectably figured on the eleven 
plates with which the book is illustrated; woodcuts are also given 
of the heads of the various snakes and lizards, and of the tadpoles, 
and some details of the Batrachians. The accounts of the habits of 
the different species are given in a pleasing style, not disfigured by 
that affectation of slang which some writers appear to consider 
indispensably necessary in a popular work on natural history. An 
appendix contains a synonymic list of the species, and the whole 
work forms a most convenient handbcok of the subject on which it 
treats. 
