462 



NA TUR/I 



[March 14, 1901 



must obviously be didactic. This method, however, has 

 its limits ; in this case we think these limits have been 

 somewhat exceeded. The student, or even the practi- 

 tioner, who does not supplement the knowledge of gout 

 he has obtained from this source by some further reading 

 will not, we are afraid, be in possession of the whole 

 truth concerning this disease. 



The remainder of the book is devoted to the diseases 

 of the blood, the section being introduced by a chapter 

 up.on the blood under normal conditions, by Dr. Louis 

 Jenner, This chapter will be found exceedingly useful 

 to those interested in this subject : it is concise and up- 

 to-date, and deals with the more generally employed 

 technique. The diseases of the blood themselves are 

 dealt with by Dr. Sidney Coupland. 



In the case of the work before us, the reviewer finds 

 himself in rather an anomalous position in that the editor 

 has written no preface, so that it is difificult to know by 

 what standard the book should be judged. From a 

 careful perusal of it we should place it mid-way between 

 a book of reference and an ordinary text-book of medi- 

 cine. Had it contained fuller references to the literature 

 it might almost have ranked as a reference-book ; as it 

 is, it will no doubt fill a very useful place, which it 

 thoroughly deserves to do, in the library of the advanced 

 medical student and the practitioner. 



A NEW CLASSIFICATION OF THE 

 REPTILES. 

 Beitrag zur Systematik und Genealogie der Reptilien. 

 By Prof. Max Fiirbringer. Pp. 91. (Jena : Fischer, 

 1900.) Price Mk. 2.50. 



IN the year 1873 Prof. Fiirbringer, who has quite 

 recently succeeded his illustrious master in the 

 chair of comparative anatomy at Heidelberg, commenced 

 to publish a series of contributions to the morphology of 

 the pectoral girdle of reptiles, with special reference to 

 the myology, the fourth and concluding part of which 

 has now appeared. This highly elaborate piece of work 

 is supplemented by a chapter entitled " Beitrag zur 

 Systematik und Genealogie der Reptilien," in which the 

 author sets forth his views on the phylogenetic arrange- 

 ment of the class Reptilia. 



As regards the origin of reptiles, the numerous fossil 

 remains with which we are already acquainted seem to 

 indicate so complete a passage from the Stegocephalous 

 Batrachians, that the question at issue has lately been 

 where to draw the dividing. line between the two classes, 

 an uncertainty which is further emphasised by the fact that 

 the Microsauria, such as Hylonomus and Petrobates, of 

 Carboniferous age, placed by most authorities among the 

 Stegocephala, are included in the Reptilia by Prof. 

 Fiirbringer. From a knowledge of these connecting 

 forms the conclusion must, it seems, follow that the 

 ancestors of the Reptilia proper, themselves probably 

 derived from Crossopterygian Fishes, as believed by 

 Cope, Baur, and many other modern zoologists, possessed 

 a skull with numerous membrane bones roofing over the 

 temporal and occipital regions and with an immovable 

 quadrate, that they belonged, in fact, to the type desig- 

 nated by Cope as monimostyhc. In the process of 

 evolution, in the series known as the Squamata (lizards 

 NO. 1637, VOL. 63] 



and snakes), the predominant modern reptilian type,, 

 the number of membrane bones having been reduced 

 and the temple left more and more unprotected, the 

 quadrate became free and more or less movably articu- 

 lated to the squamosal and supratemporal (streptostylic 

 skull of Cope). The direction of the line of evolution 

 in this instance, running as it does concurrently with the 

 reduction and disappearance of the limbs, seems clear 

 enough, and it is further supported by geological data, 

 all early Reptiles and Batrachians being monimostylic 

 without a known exception, whilst the streptostylic types 

 appear first in the Jurassic as Lacertilia, to be followed 

 by Snakes in the Eocene. 



These conclusions are, however, set aside by Prof. 

 Fiirbringer. For him, the streptostylic condition is the 

 primitive one, and, from the partial homology which he 

 believes to have established between the spheno-pterygo- 

 quadrate muscle of the Lacertilia and the tensor velt 

 maxillae superioris of Selachians, he is led to look upon 

 the condition exhibited by Geckos and Monitors as 

 nearer the original one than that known in Sphenodon^ 

 in which the said muscle is much reduced. From this 

 sole consideration, and by the purely gratuitous as- 

 sumption that some early Rhynchocephalians, such as 

 Kadaliosaurus, and Microsaurians may eventually prove 

 to have been streptostylic, the author thinks himself 

 justified in holding that the ancestral types from which 

 the Lacertilians have been derived cannot be sought for 

 among either the Stegocephalians or the Rhyncho- 

 cephalians with the cranial structure of which we are at 

 present acquainted, but that they will be found to be 

 connected with some primitive hypothetical Amphibian 

 type in which the quadrate was movably articulated with 

 the skull, as in the lowest form of living Selachians. 



" That such primitive streptostylic Amphibians have j 

 once existed, is rendered probable by the facts ascertained I 

 in the ontogeny of the living Amphibians. Probably strep- ' 

 tostyly became converted into monimostyly as, in the 

 course of evolution, their originally superficial apparatus 

 of dermal bones became more and more intimately con- 

 nected with the quadrate, the mobility of which conse- 

 quently lessened and finally completely ceased.'' Jj 



This reasoning, by which, on the ground of the imper- li 

 fections of the geological record, chronological indications 

 are absolutely ignored, is not likely to meet with general 

 favour. After the multitude of well-preserved Carbon- 

 iferous and Permian " Eotetrapoda " which have lately 

 been discovered and described by Credner, Frilsch and 

 others, it will be difficult to accept the author's teaching 

 that we know practically nothing of the progenitors of 

 existing reptiles, andj that these must be connected 

 through a series of hypothetical Proamphibia or Pro- 

 tetrapoda with equally hypothetical Selachian-like 

 animals. 



As a consequence of the above assumption, the new 

 classification differs fundamentally from those hitherto 

 based on phylogenetic considerations, in this, that the 

 Streptostylia s. Squamata, with the two orders Lacertilia 

 and Ophidia, are placed at the base of the series. The 

 Rhynchocephalia, Acrosauria, Microsauria and Ichthyop- 

 terygia are associated with them in a subclass Tocosauria. 

 A second subclass, Theromorpha s, Theromora, includes 

 the Dicynodonts, Anomodonts and Pariasaurians ; a 

 third, Synaptosauria, the Mesosaurians, Sauropterygians 



