ings of a lighter tint, bordered with brown on the back Of the use of its expansive frill, we can offer no opinion; nor are the habits of the animal recorded.

GENUS DRACO.

We now pass to the genus Draco, which contains about eight species; natives of India, Java, Sumatra, Manilla, and Timor, etc.

These little Lizards are distinguished, at a glance, by the horizontal extension of the skin of the sides into parachutes, resembling the wings of a butterfly; and have been, from this circumstance, called Dragons by naturalists. We must not startle at the name; the dragon of romance is not the dragon of nature, and lives only in fantastic fables.

The "gorgons, hydras, and chimeras dire-" monsters, with which credulous ignorance once peopled the foreign regions of the earth-have vanished before the light of science; and we now smile at the names and pictures of beings which could not have possibly existed, inasmuch as their component parts could not be associated together, without a violation of the laws of organic structure. Fear may give wings to the mighty boa, but wings would not assist its progress, nor could they be possessed by it; and for this reason, the plan upon which the skeleton is built prevents it. In snakes there is no breast bone, no clavicles, (collar bones,) no scapulæ, (flat shoulder bones,) and these are essential to the presence of true, effective wings. Look, for example, at the skeleton of a bird; how vast is the sternum, (breast-bone,) with its deep keel, affording an ample space to be occupied by the peculiar muscles, which act upon the organs of flight. In addition to the clavicles which support the shoulders, and keep them duly forward, there is the furculum, (merrythought,) strictly analogous to the clavicles of man, keeping the shoulders wide apart, and bearing the strain of the muscles, which tends to bring them together. Again, look at the short, firm,

and almost immoveable back-bone, whence arise the strong ribs locked upon each other, and uniting firmly with the edge of the sternum. But the structure of

the snake is the opposite to all this: short, slender ribs, and a back-bone, composed of a multitude of distinct portions, united by a ball and socket mode of articulation, characterize its flexible framework.

But though flying snakes are fabulous beings, and winged boas, careering on expanded pinions, creatures of imagination, the addition of membranous wings to the structure of Lizards, is not incompatible with the plan of their skeleton.

Among the strange and anomalous beings, whose existence, at some distant epoch of our earth, is proved by the researches of geology, which have brought to light their fossil remains, we find a flying Lizard, to which Cuvier has given the name of Pterodactylus, and which, as the construction of its skeleton abundantly proves, was capable of skimming from one spot to another; or, perhaps, even of flitting at pleasure through the air, on wide and ample wings. That these wings were membranous, may be safely inferred, from the circumstance of their being supported upon long, slender bones, very like those we find in the wing of the bat. In short, these bones acted as stretchers, when the wings were expanded, and were neither more nor less than the bones of the second finger of each fore paw, lengthened out so enormously, as to extend to more than double the length of the body. The neck was very long, and bird-like; the head large; the jaws armed with pointed teeth; and the tail very short. Six or seven species appear to be distinguishable; of these, one is almost the size of a thrush, one of a common bat, and one considerably larger than the first. We may, without overstepping the bounds of probability, nay, perhaps of certainty, picture to ourselves these strange creatures, flitting on leathern wings,' amidst deep and mighty forests, in chase of their insect prey.

To these extinct Reptiles, the little Dragons bear but a distant resemblance: the membranous, wing-like expansions which they possess, are not at all connected with the limbs, which are perfectly free, but are supported, as may be seen in the annexed sketch, by the

SKELETON OF THE DRAGON.

first five false ribs, on each side; these ribs, instead of turning down, and thus encircling the body, are greatly elongated, so as to form the framework of the membrane stretched over them. This membrane, then, capable of being folded up, but incapable of being agitated, so as to strike the air, constitutes rather a parachute than a pair of wings: when expanded, it enables the animal to take long, sweeping leaps, from branch to branch, or