352 CLASSIFICATION OP REPTILES. 



tween these divisions, they can see none. Their systems 

 are like the winding galleries and intricate labyrinths of 

 antique mansions, — leading to nothing. But this, unfor- 

 tunately, is not all. Had the labours of these writers been 

 confined merely to the discrimination of forms, and the 

 separation of small natural groups, all would have been 

 well, and we could have spoken of their labours with 

 unalloyed praise ; but, in their zeal to excel each other 

 in the precision of their characters, each has thought it 

 necessary to go beyond the other. The grand and ju- 

 dicious divisions of Cuvier facilitated research^ but 

 those of the German school have a directly contrary 

 effect: natural genera have been now so repeatedly 

 divided and subdivided, that all the original and tangible 

 characters have been frittered away into minute divisions, 

 which they exalt to the rank of genera ; but which, in 

 three instances out of five, contain a single species ! With 

 them the form of a scale, or the absence of a pore, con- 

 stitutes a genus. But-let us take an instance, at ran- 

 dom, of this mode of division, and we will select it from 

 the valuable work of two of the most eminent erpetologists 

 of the age, who in many instances, much to their honour, 

 have purged the science of these frivolous or pseudo- 

 genera. The Iguanian lizards of M^NI. Dumeril and Bibron 

 contain no less than forty-seven genera, each of which 

 is considered of the same rank : now if we subtract 

 one of these, the genus Anolis, we find that in the 

 whole of the remaining forty-six there are actually but 

 121 species *, and that out of this number twenty-two 

 are made to represent genera ! Had these authors adopted 

 all the divisions of their predecessors, it is probable that 

 their forty-seven genera would have been at least doubled. 

 We merely conjecture this from the simple fact of the 

 prince of Musignano having been at the trouble to enu- 



* These species are thus distributed : — 



3 genera have 10 species. 2 genera have 4 species. 



1 « '« 8 " 5 " " 3 " 



■1 «« «« n <t ]Q «« « 2 " 



2 M « 5 « tZ " " 1 " 



