PRESENT STATE OF ERPETOLOGY. 353 



merate no less than nineteen *, which have been made 

 out of the Gecko lizards (Platydactylus Cuv.), but which 

 our authors, upon assigned reasons, have most judiciously 

 reduced to seven, f 



(171.) It may, indeed_, be urged in support of 

 "^making" new genera, that those who complain against 

 it are generally those who have most offended in this 

 way, and that consequently we are the last who should 

 object to the practice in others ; having characterised 

 more new groups unnamed among the vertebrated animals 

 than all the other naturalists of this country put to- 

 gether. But this reply, however correct in one sense, 

 does not meet the question. Out of between one and two 

 hundred which we have thought it necessary to name, 

 not one has been admitted which did not bear upon our 

 primary object, that is, of distinguishing one type of 

 form from another; had these types, therefore, not been 

 so named, they could not have been spoken of, or referred 

 to, with that precision which is absolutely necessary for 

 their becoming '^ instruments of reasoning." Not one, in 

 short, has been named, but after as complete an analysis 

 of the group they belonged to, as we were capable of 

 giving. Among the woodpeckers, for instance, we have 

 characterised no less than twenty-one sub-genera, and 

 yet each of these has its representative in five different 

 circles of the same family ; so that, if one is subtracted, 

 without a substitute, it would be like separating the 

 links of a graduated chain, by the removal of one which 

 rendered that gradation perfect. To genera or sub- 

 genera, founded upon such considerations, we ever have 

 been, and shall be, a warm advocate, let their number 

 be what they may ; but we feel it would be altogether 

 inconsistent with all we have done or said, to adopt 

 every genus which every one may choose to make, on 

 no other grounds than his own individual opinion. 



* The addition of Pristurus, proposed by himself, will make the number 

 exactly twenty. This name, by the way, has been previously used to desig- 

 nate a supposed new genus of shark. 



f Two of these, not having disk-like appendages, do not appear to enter 

 into the circle, but to be the connecting links with StelUo and Anolis. 



VOL. II. A A 



