918 Transactions.—Zoology. 
naming it Hatteria punctata, by which name this lizard has since become 
generally known. It was lately discovered, however, that a skull of this 
reptile (whence obtained it is not stated) existed in the museum of the 
Royal College of Surgeons, to which the generic term Sphenodon had pre- 
viously been applied. The familiar name of Hatteria punctata had accord- 
ingly to give place to the less barbarous one of Sphenodon punctatum. 
The anatomy of the Tuatara has been made the subject of a very able 
and exhaustive memoir by Dr. Günther, published in the “Philosophical 
Transactions of the Royal Society” (1867). The learned author claims for 
this New Zealand form, which differs in some important structural charac- 
ters from every other known Saurian, and in its osteology is the most bird- 
like of existing reptiles, a higher rank than that of a family, and proposes 
to make it the type of a distinct order of Reptilia, equal in systematie value 
to the ophidians and erocodilians. He points out that the crocodiles are 
removed from the lizards into a distinct order or section, on the ground of 
osteological characters as well as on account of the higher organization of 
their soft parts; that in Sphenodon the modifications of the lacertian 
skeleton extend to the same parts as in the crocodiles, although they are 
frequently of a different nature; and that the repetition of lacertian 
characters in its soft organs is in some measure counterbalanced by the 
absence of copulatory organs. The presence of a double bar across the 
temporal region, the intimate and firm connexion of the os quadratum 
with the skull and pterygoids, the erect ilium, and the uncinate processes 
of the ribs, are characters by which a tendency towards the crocodilians is 
manifested ; while the affinities of Sphenodon with the true lizards are far 
more numerous and of greater importance, as shewn by the structure of 
the heart, of the organs of respiration and digestion, the absence of a 
diaphragm and of peritoneal canals, the transverse anal cleft, the absence 
of an external ear, the free tongue, ete. Yet to associate it with the lizards 
would entirely destroy the unity of this natural group; and Dr. Günther, 
therefore, proposes a modification of Stannius' division of recent Reptilia, 
adding the characters which distinguish Sphenodon from all other known 
Saurians, and assigning it the position of a third order in the first division 
(Squamata), under the name of Rhyncocephalia. 
In his concluding observations, he remarks that the skeleton of the 
Tuatara— with its amphicelian vertebre and abdominal sternum on the 
one hand, and its highly-developed osseous skull and uncinate apophyses 
of the ribs on the other—presents a strange combination of elements of 
high and low organization ; and this is the more significant as this peculiar 
animal occurs in a part of the globe remarkable for the low and scanty 
development of reptilian life.” 
