Zsivny Viktor (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 30. (Budapest 1936)

Fejérváry, G. J.: Notes on a very little-known lizard: Lacerta princeps Blanf., with description of the male specimen preserved in the Vienna Natural History Museum

only, bearing upon the quantity in which the small dark spots occur on the dorsal surface. The livery of the young proves, on the other hand, to be most instructive in developmental — both phylogenetical and individual — and relational respect. It clearly points to the evolution of the livery having proceeded, in L. princeps, along the same line as in L. ocellata DAUD. subsp. pater LATASTE and its minor sized race tangitana BLGR.: namely, it draws its origin from a pattern that was obviously much like that of L. ocellata DAUD. S. sir., which consists in a black reticulation through the meshwork of which the bright ground colour appears in the form of insuliform designs, whilst along the flanks handsome blue ocelli appear within the range of the temporal band, that are nothing but a multiplication of the 1 or 2 blue axillar spots occurring in many Lacertidae, which, after such numerical increase, gradually invade the flanks. In L. ocellata DAUD. S. str. this livery is persistent, in subsp. pater, however, and in tangitana, the development of the livery advanced to a higher degree: it reached the phase of a renewed uniformity, i. e. designlessness, in its phylogenetical history. In the ontogenetical development, however, the penultimate phase is still repeated, as may well be seen in the young and halfgrown pater, and traces of this earlier pattern may be preserved, more or less, even in some adult specimens. The same phenomenon of repetition, or biogenetical recapitulation, of the penultimate phase in the history of the livery's development, is to be found, e. g., in the different systematical units belonging to the species L. viridis LAUR. as well, which, in its most advanced forms of livery development, also proves to have incurred reiterated uniformity (7, p. 533—537). The largest, and, apart from L. princeps, most interesting member of the Massive Lizard's group, L. Simonyi STEIND. S. str. from the Roques del Zalmore near Hierro island (Canaries), together with its subsp. Stehlini STEIND. from Gran Canary (3, p. 124), also exhibits a phylogenetical reiteration of uniform coloration; ocelli, himatologically homologous with those present in the forms of L. ocellata and in L. princeps, also occur in this species, with the exception that they are of a pale dirty yellowish colour instead of being blue; they extend far down, along the flanks, just as in the case of another Canarian Lacerta, L. Galloti D. & B., which lives on Tenerila, varieties of it being known from Las Palmas, Gomera, Hierro and the largest of the Rocques del Zalmore (6, p. 74). Also this species tends, to a certain degree, to uniformity — the livery