184 Mr. A. W. E. O'Shaughnessy on Norops. 



the accuracy of the present determinations of species in this 

 group by continual observation of the living or fresh animal, 

 would of course be in a position to speak more confidently than 

 one who has only specimens in spirits to judge from. 



Unfortunately most persons who have as yet possessed such 

 opportunity have not had the qualification necessary to the 

 employing of it to much scientific advantage, and have fur- 

 nished us with only a few more or less confused notices of the 

 lizards in question. Consequently a careful investigation of 

 all such persistent characters as may be found in the specimens 

 of a good collection, aided by any vestige of colour and general 

 life appearance as may yet remain, is still the method most 

 likely to produce valuable results. 



Norops, the first form noticed by Dumeril and Bibron in 

 their history of the group, is at present in some confusion, 

 owing to a misapprehension of the descriptions of the two spe- 

 cies given by different writers. 



Daudin (Hist. Nat. des Kept, tome iv. p. 89), in 1802, de- 

 scribed a lizard under the name of Anolis dore, which is evi- 

 dently a Norops. His description, though very good, inas- 

 much as it anticipates many of those general characters on the 

 ground of which Norops has been separated from Anolis by 

 modern naturalists, cannot now be regarded as anything more 

 than a successful attempt to discriminate the form Norops, 

 confusedly mentioned by Linneeus, Lacepede, and other pre- 

 vious naturalists. 



Daudin states that his acquaintance with the lizard was 

 confined to two specimens, one of them being in a very cor- 

 rupted state. 



Wagler in 1830 (Naturliches System der Amphibien, p. 149) 

 established the genus Norops, and cites N. auratus, the Anolis 

 dore of Daudin, as its single representative. 



These are the only scientific notices of the lizard in question 

 previous to the great work of Dumeril and Bibron, 1837. 



The description of Norops auratus at p. 82, tome iv., of the 

 ' Erpe'tologie Generale,' must therefore be regarded as the first 

 which characterizes a species of the genus Norops sufficiently 

 for modern scientific investigation. Although the specific 

 name may be attributed with propriety to Daudin, in recogni- 

 tion of his having first clearly extricated the form from the 

 confused notices of previous writers, the first description of 

 specific characters in the genus must be assigned to Dumeril 

 and Bibron ; and all subsequent attempts at identification or 

 criticism of the species must be held to date from that de- 

 scription. 



