ARRANGEMENT OF THE REPTILES. 103 



that no difficulty exists in establishing these affinities. 

 All writers agree that the Enalosaures make a decided 

 approach to fish. The very name of Ichthyosaurus, 

 bestowed upon the best known of these fossil reptiles by 

 the learned Koenig, might be taken as a strong confirm- 

 ation of these views. The Enalosaures, in fact, are the 

 fish of the reptUe class, for they all swim by means, not 

 of feet, but of fins : this at once shows, almost to demon- 

 stration, the union of the three aberrant classes of ver- 

 tebrated animals into one cu'cle. On the intimate union 

 between the reptiles and the Amphibia, strictly so termed, 

 we need not dilate : their affinity is so close, that M. 

 Cuvier includes them both under one order; the frogs 

 and the sirens fonning his division of batracian reptiles, 

 or part of the Amphibia of the present work, 



(108.) On the natural or primary groups of this 

 class, no two naturalists have agreed ; nor, indeed, is 

 it likely they should, seeing that the only object hitherto 

 aimed at, has been that artificial separation and division 

 necessary to study parts, without any reference to the 

 relation which these parts bear to other classes of 

 animals. To this remark, however, there are two 

 exceptions, which we shall presently notice. As animals 

 may be arranged in a hundred different ways, and as 

 each of these will be a separate mode of classification, 

 it seems unnecessary to swell our pages, even had v/e 

 the space for so doing, with a dry enumeration of 

 these innumerable systems of division ; for such only, 

 in point of fact, can they be called. A few general 

 remarks, therefore, on the progress of our knowledge of 

 these animals, is all that v/e shall now oifer to the 

 general reader. 



(109.) Under the name of Amphibia, Linnsus com- 

 prehended not only the salamanders, to which, in modern 

 days, with the frogs, this name is restricted, but also the 

 true reptiles and a large number of fishes. * Gmelin 

 deserves some credit for detaching these latter from the 

 class, by placing the Nantes of the Swedish naturalisi; 



* Syst. Nat. 13 ed. Vind. i7G7. 

 H 4 



