REPTILES. 331 



CLASS III. REPTILES. (Reptilia.) 



Vertebrated animals with cold red blood, respiring by lungs ; 

 body naked, or covered with scales. 



MANY of the animals of this class were well known to the 

 ancients ; and Pliny in his Natural History has embodied all 

 the information known to his time respecting the different spe- 

 cies. The earliest of the modern writers on the same subject, 

 such as Gesner, Aldrovandus, and Johnston, though they ad- 

 ded somewhat to the general stock of information, yet, from the 

 prejudices of their age, or the want of accurate observation, pro- 

 ceeded but little way in separating fact from fable, and redu- 

 cing the fictions of poets and the representations of travellers to 

 the capability of ordinary belief. This class of animals, most 

 of them forbidding in their appearance, and many of them dan- 

 gerous in their nature, seems particularly to have become the 

 subject of exaggeration ; and many are the fables which have 

 been related of their magnitude and power, from the African 

 serpent of 120 feet in length which stopped the army of Attilius 

 Regulus, to the basilisk which killed its observer by a glance. 



The celebrated John Ray, the precursor of Linnaeus in me- 

 thodical arrangement, was the first to introduce a system upon 

 intelligible principles. In his Synopsis Methodica Animalium 

 Quadrupedum et Serpentini generis, published in 1693, he 

 arranges reptiles into 1. Oviparous Animals with red blood, 

 respiring by lungs, and having a heart with one ventricle ; 2. Li- 

 zards ; and, 3. Serpents. The first of these divisions includes 

 the frogs, divided into aquatic and terrestrial, the toads, and the 

 tortoises. The second division includes the Saurian reptiles of 

 Cuvier; and the third the Ophidian reptiles of the same author. 



Ray was followed as a systematic writer by Linnaeus, who, 

 in his Systema Naturce, arranged this tribe of animals, under 

 the title of AMPHIBIA, into three orders, viz. Reptilia, Serpentes, 

 and Nantes. This last order, which included the cartilaginous 

 fishes, was removed to its proper place in the class of fishes by 



