224 S A U R I A. 



even the fact that the auricular aperture is sometimes invisible, were 

 as many traits analogous to those of the snakes. Still their valvular 

 eyelids give them a peculiar physiognomy altogether at variance with 

 all the known forms of Ophidians. 



Genus OPHIODES, Wagi. 



Gen. Char. — Head slender and depressed ; snout conical. No teeth 

 on the palate. Tongue bifid, covered anteriorly with granular, and 

 posteriorly with filiform papillae. Maxillary teeth conical and 

 simple. No external auricular aperture. Eyelid scaly. Nostrils 

 lateral, perforating a small plate. Two pairs of internasals or fronto- 

 rostral plates. Two postnasals and one loral. Body elongated, sub- 

 cylindrical, rounded, covered with striated scales, which appear 

 smooth when the epidermis is well preserved. No anterior limbs ; 

 posterior ones reduced to narrow, flattened, slender, and tapering 

 flaps, protected by scales. Tail conical and pointed. 



SYJ^.— OpJiiodes, Wagl. Naturl. Syst. Auiph. 1830, 159.— Dum. & Bibr. Erpet. 

 g^a. V, 1839, 788.— Gray, Catal. Lizz. Brit. Mus. 1845, 99.— Dum. & A.DuM.Catal. 

 meth. Rept. Mus. d'hist. nat. ii, 1851, 188. . 



Observ.— The structure of the tongue appears to constitute the chief 

 generic feature in this genus : a large portion of its posterior surface 

 being covered with villous papillae, whilst its anterior extremity ex- 

 hibits a pavement of small granules. The granular portion is separated 

 from the villous portion by a deep transverse groove, and the apex of 

 the organ is subdivided into two angular points. 



The history of the genus Opliiodes is somewhat interwoven with 

 that of Pygodactylus, established by Merrem in 1820. Fitzinger, in 

 1826, misunderstood the species upon which it was founded, and was 

 followed in 1830 by Wagler, who proposes to suppress Merrem's genus. 

 Dumeril and Bibron in 1839, and Gray in 1845, rendered the subject 

 still more intricate, when Fitzinger himself, in 1843, restored both 

 Opliiodes and Pygodactylus as distinct genera, giving uj) his claims to 

 the genus Pygodactylus, and abandoning also that of Scelotes, likewise 

 proposed by him in 1826, and upheld by Gray and the herpetologists 

 of the Paris Museum. 



