ORDER CHELONIA. 43 



to provide them with nourishment of any kind ; still, even if 

 a great number of these young should perish, there is no fear 

 of the extinction of the species, nature having made a sufficient 

 provision against that in the excess of their fecundity. 



The obscure recesses inhabited by the majority of the rep- 

 tile tribes are, in all probability, far from being even yet 

 thoroughly explored. How many of these still unknown 

 beings may lie concealed in the depths of inland waters, 

 and of vast and desert marshes, of unthreaded and impervious 

 wilds of vegetation ? How many may creep yet unheeded 

 among the gorges of the Alpine mountains, of the Alleghanies, 

 and of the Andes ? It is in such retreats that those double- 

 natured animals have been found, those true amphibia, such 

 as the siren and the proteus, equally capacitated to visit the 

 profoundest depths of the liquid element, and to sport 

 through the humid prairie and the drowned Savannah. Of 

 the manners, the modes of reproduction, and, perhaps, the 

 metamorphoses of many of these, we are entirely ignorant. 

 Let the consciousness of this ignorance, then, teach us 

 modesty in our judgments, and diffidence in the establish- 

 ment of our systematic codes. Naturalists should remember 

 that they are not the lawgivers of nature, but the humble 

 registrars of her operations, and that, if they do turn inter- 

 preters of her statutes, they should be especially regardful 

 of the nature and the number of the cases on which their 

 conclusions shall be founded. It is true that we have made 

 great progress in the Book of Nature ; but how many leaves 

 of the mighty volume yet remain unturned ! 



We have now exhausted all the observations which can 

 come with propriety in this place concerning reptiles in gene- 

 ral. The osteology of these animals presents a very wide 

 field of discussion, but we have avoided entering into it for 

 two reasons ; the first is, that with regard to tlie Chelonians 

 and Saurians, this subject has been already pretty fully 



