282 CLASS REPTILIA. 



appears naked, but when dissected, exhibits in its 

 thickness some scales, altogether formed, though 

 slender and regularly disposed, on many transverse 

 ranges between the wrinkles of the skin. The 

 head of the coecilia is depressed, the anus round, 

 and pretty nearly at the end of the body. Their 

 ribs are much too short to surround the trunk. 

 The articulation of the bodies of the vertebrae is 

 made by facets like a hollowed cone, filled with 

 gelatinous cartilage as in the fish, and some of the 

 last of the batracians, and their cranium is united 

 to the first vertebra by two tubercles, also like the 

 batracians. Amongst the Ophidians the amphis- 

 boenge alone approximate to this structure. The 

 maxillary bones cover the orbit, which is only 

 pierced with a very small hole ; and those of the 

 temples cover the temporal foss, so that the head 

 presents above nothing but a continued osseous 

 buckler. Their hyoid bone, composed of three 

 pairs of arches, might lead to the belief that in their 

 early age they had gills. Their maxillary and pala- 

 tine teeth are ranged on two concentric lines, as 

 in the proteus, but are often sharp, and curved 

 backwards, like those of the serpents, properly so 

 called. Their nostrils open at the back part of the 

 palate, and their lower jaw has no mobile pedicle, 

 inasmuch as the tympanic bone is enchased with 

 the other bones in the buckler of the cranium. 



The auricle of the heart in these animals is not 

 divided sufficiently deep, to be regarded as double, 



