OWEN.— CLASSIFICATION OF REPYTILIA. 73 
quirers after truth, proud only of what they may have achieved or won for the 
general use of man. Neitherare they daring and presumptuous unbelievers—a 
character which ignorance has sometimes affixed to them—who would, like the 
Titans, storm heaven, by placing mountain upon mountain, till hurled down from 
the height attained by the terrible thunders of outraged Jove; but rather the 
pious pilgrims to the Holy Land, who toil on in search of the sacred shrine, in 
search of truth—God’s truth—God’s laws as manifested in His works, in His 
ereation. 
[A very interesting communication, laid before the Geological Section, by Sir 
Charles Lyell, ‘On the Results of some Observations in France, in reference to 
the Antiquity of the Human Race,” appeared in the last number of the 
Canadian Journal, Vol. IV. p. 497. In the present Number we give two ad- 
ditional papers: one of great value, “On Fossil and Recent Reptilia,” by 
Professor Owen; and a communication of much general interest, ‘On Japan;” 
by Lawrence Oliphant, E=q.] 
ON THE ORDERS OF FOSSIL AND RECBNT REPTILIA, AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION 
IN TIME.* BY PROF. UWEN, F.R.S., ETC. 
Professor Owen began by remarking that, with the exception of Geology, no 
collateral science had profited so largely from the study of organic remains as 
Zoology. The catalogues of animal species had received immense accessions 
from the determination of the nature and affinities of those which had become 
extinct, and much deeper and clearer insight had been gained into the natural ar- 
rangement and subdivision of the classes of animals since Paleontology had ex- 
panded our survey of them. Of this the class Reptilia, or cold-blooded air- 
breathing Vertebrates, afforded a striking example. In the latest edition of the 
‘Régne Animal,’ of Cuvier, 1829, as in the ‘ Hlémens de Zoologie’ of M. Edwards, 
1834-37, and the still more recent monograph on American Testudinata, by 
Agassiz, 4to, 1857, the quadruple division of the class, proposed by Brongniart in 
1802, was adhered to, viz., Chelonia (tortoises, turtles), Sauria (crocodiles, lizards), 
Ophidia (serpents), Batrachia (frogs, newts); only the last group is made a dis- 
tinet class by the distinguished Professor of the United States :—‘ After this 
Separation of the Batrachians from the true Reptiles we have only three 
orders left in the class of Reptiles proper,—the Ophidians, the Saurians, 
and the Chelonians,” 1. ¢. p. 239. In Prof. Owen’s Reports on British Fossil 
Reptiles, to the British Association, in 1839 and 1841, it was proposed to 
divide the class into eight orders, viz., Enaliosauria, Crocodilia, Dinosauria, Lacer- 
tilia, Pterosauria, Chelonia, Ophidia, and Batrachia, which were severally charac- 
terized. Subsequent researches had brought to light additional forms and strue~- 
tural modifications of cold-blooded air-breathing animals now extinct, which had 
suggested corresponding modifications of their distribution into ordinal groups. 
Another result of such deeper insight into the forms that have passed away, has 
been the clearer recognition of the artificiality of the boundary between the classes 
Pisces and eptilia of modern zoological systems. The conformity of pattern in 
the arrangement of the bones of the outwardly well-ossified skull in certain 
* From The Atheneum of October 1, 1859. 
