124 
ON THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF SEEPENTS. 
rated from each other, to be included in two well character- 
ized families. 
The nature of the system recently published by the late 
M. Wagler defies all analysis ; always led astray by the 
sallies of an ardent imagination, often guided by principles 
which should ever be strangers to science, anticipating the 
spirit of the age, this laborious zoologist has created a system 
in which the venomous and harmless serpents are huddled 
together pell-mell, — the sea-snakes with the terrestrial, the 
fresh-water species with tree-serpents — a system supported 
by diffuse but specious reasoning, often forced, and more 
lively than just ; a system with a crowd of new-invented 
divisions, the number of which alone makes the most tena- 
cious memory tremble. The same writer has been use- 
ful by the publication of Herpetological Plates. 
It remains for me to mention M. Lenz, who has studied 
even in the minutest details the manners and habits of In- 
digenous Serpents. I have often had recourse to the scien- 
tific observations of this naturalist, which are contained in 
a General Natural History of Serpents, written in a 
popular and often diffuse style, but which shews that the 
author is more familiar with the literature of this part of 
science than with the objects themselves. 
I omit many other attempts by anatomists or by philo- 
sophers to establish natural systems of ophiology : suffice it 
to quote, as an example of Essays of this sort, the memoir 
of M. PiETGEN, inserted in the 14th Volume, Second 
Part, p. 245, of Transactions of the Leopoldine Academy, 
Many other Savans, in short, have contributed to the pro- 
gress of ophiology, by publishing isolated observations. 
Travellers have enriched their journals by numerous scat- 
tered remarks, relating to the manners of serpents, in which 
they have described unedited species : to this number be- 
long Pallas, Hasselquist, Forskal, Bruce, Bartram, 
Bose, Palisot de Beauvais, Paterson, Bussel, Madler 
Merian, Maregrav, Mikan, Badbi, the Prince of 
Neuwied, Spin, Say, Davy, White, Lesson, Wiegmann, 
and several others which we have mentioned in speaking 
of their works. Other naturalists have applied themselves 
