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

of subsp. Caesaris LEHRS being considered, by CAESAR R. BOETTGER, contrarily to the opinion emitted by PH. LEHRS, „not a primitive one, but" „highly specialized" — but the ocelli are, in spite of the dark, rather melanotic colour of the animal, of a shiny blue instead of the dull yellowish tint obtaining in L. Simonyi. In all of these species, with which the livery of L. princeps has been both genetically and descriptively compared, the ocelli of the temporal band (vitta temporalis) extend much more caudad than in L. princeps. In this species the ocelli are less numerous and more axillar and ad-axillar, i. e. they exhibit a more primitive condition in their occurrence than in the rest of the forms alluded to. If, however, such condition is, in the phylogenetical lineage — i. e. in the euthygenetical (8, p. 351 and 9, p. 475) series — of L, princeps, really primitive, or if it is due to a reduction process bearing upon the number of the ocelli, the more caudad ones having already vanished in the lapse of preceding generations, that is a question we cannot answer at present. Our' knowledge of the livery in the young L. princeps suggestively pleads in favour of the former supposition. As compared to the livery of L. viridis, the eventual inclination of the female sex towards the preservation of designs characteristic of the young, may be noticed, as a parallel feature, in L. princeps, presumed, of course, that the dark spots mentioned by BLANFORD, but wanting in the specimen of the British Museum, should prove to be present in a higher percentage in the females than the males — a detail that cannot be clarified on the strength of the two adult females and the one adult male we actually know of. Before closing this analysis of the livery, it should be remarked, still in connexion with L. viridis, that ocelli occurring on the flanks are by no means himatoiogically homologous in every case. The young, and even the semiadult, of L. viridis LAUR. subsp. Schreiben DE BEDR. (from Spain and Portugal) also presents lateral ocelli, such specimens having been figured by BOULENGER (3, p. 92). It must be emphasized, however, that the ocelli occurring on the flanks and along the sides of the back, i. e. along the dorsal limit of the flanks, are in no wise homologous with one another. The uppermost range (in L. viridis Schreiberi) is homologous with the remnants of the supraciliary stripe (stria supraciliaris, MÉHELY), whilst the series following upon it, is retraceable to the light fields enclosed by dark meshes within the boundaries of the temporal band (vitta temporalis), the ground colour of which appears — from analogy drawn from the phylogenetically very instructive livery obtaining