74 The Smithsonian Institution 



American fauna since the publication of Professor Cope's 

 monograph. The most notable are two blind forms de- 

 scribed by Doctor Leonhard Stejneger, one in 1892, a cave 

 salamander (Typhlotriton spelceus) of the family Desmog- 

 nathidae, and the other in 1896, a tenant of subterranean 

 waters, and related to the Proteidse (Typhlomolge). 



REPTILES 



THE earliest contributions to herpetology published by the 

 Smithsonian Institution were also contributions to paleon- 

 tology. The first was a " Memoir on Mosasaurus, and three 

 Allied New Genera," by Doctor Robert W. Gibbes, and ap- 

 peared in 1850. A second by Doctor Joseph Leidy, includ- 

 ing the tortoises from the " Mauvaises Terres," of Nebraska, 

 was published in 1853. A third was a monograph of the 

 "Cretaceous Reptiles of the United States" (1865), and was 

 also from the pen of Leidy. 



In the year 1853, the first part of a "Catalogue of North 

 American Reptiles in the Museum of the Smithsonian Insti- 

 tution," by Spencer F. Baird and Charles Girard, was pub- 

 lished, and embraced diagnoses and detailed descriptions of 

 all the " Serpents " found in America north of Mexico. New 

 principles of classification were introduced in this work, and 

 on the whole the species were more naturally grouped than 

 in any previously published work and many unknown species 

 were added to the fauna. Indeed, the chief fault charged 

 upon the work was an undue multiplication of species, but 

 although amenable to the criticism, the fault has been exag- 

 gerated and the authors have been found to be often more 

 nearly right than their early critics. Check-lists of all the 

 reptiles were published later. One by Cope appeared in 

 1875 and another by Yarrow in 1883. 



