116 
ON’ THE PHTSIOaNOMY OF SEEPENTS. 
his genera Naja, Boa, and Constrictor ; on the other hand, 
it is only necessary to examine his genera Natrix, Cerastes, 
and others, to be convinced of the little certainty which 
pervades his views relative to the characters which he as- 
signs to distinguish his artificial divisions. 
The order of Serpents, as it exists in the edition of the 
Sy sterna Natures published by Gmelin,^ differs not from 
that of his original author, but in the addition of species 
described by naturalists and travellers to that period. 
It was almost at the same time, that the work of Dau- 
BENTONf on Beptiles appeared in the form of a dictionary ; 
a book now rarely consulted, although it is the basis of 
those of Lacepede and Bonnaterre.J 
In the great work of Count Lacepede, the Serpents com- 
pose a fourth order of the class of Beptiles, distinct from 
the three first, which form those of Oviparous Quadrupeds 
with a tail, without the tail, and the Oviparous Bipeds. In 
adopting the six genera of serpents devised by Linnaeus, 
the continuator of Buffon added the Langaha and the 
Acrochordus, after the descriptions of Bruguieres and of 
Hornstedt ; for it was not until fifteen years afterwards 
that the genera Erpeton, Leioselasma, Disteira, andTrimere- 
surus, were established. The work recommends itself by the 
beauty of the style, which is poetic in some parts, although 
the statements which make the basis of the reasonings are 
not always in accordance with fact ; the descriptions, more 
lengthened than those of his predecessors, rarely sin against 
minuteness, but they are far from sufficing for a rigorous 
determination of species. The figures which serve to illus- 
trate this work are scarcely above mediocrity, and are some- 
times even very bad. 
It was not more than ten years after the publication of 
the Natural History of Beptiles of Lacepede, that a Ger- 
man translation of it appeared from the pen of the cele- 
* Linn. Syst. Naturae, Ed. 13. Gmel. Lips. 1788. 
t It forms a part of the Encyclopedic Methodiquc^ of which the first vo- 
lume appeared in 1782. 
J Encycop. Med. Faris, 1802. 
