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

development than the piqueté, the latter one being, as stated above, equal in degree to the stage of re-acquired, total uniformity, whilst the former still presents a trace of conservatism, or adherence to a more ancient pattern repeated in ontogenetical development, and obviously precedes the phase of reiterated uniformity, as clearly proved by the developmental tendency, evidenced by ontogeny and individual variation, in subsp. paier and var. tangitana. It is, perhaps, not necessary to insist upon the fact that ancestral and reiterated uniformity — I prefer not speaking, in this complex case, of „primary" and „secondary", for examining the question on a large scale, comprising the phylogenetical lineage, i. e. euthygenetical set concerned, and not applying only to such short a series in descent as expressed by e. g., a family or even a genus, it is impossible to decide the ordinal number of repetition — may be, of course, but, in the majority of cases, are surely not, identical in colour and pattern, such full coincidence of himatological details presupposing conditions that hardly ever will effectively occur in the biohistory of any evolutional series of biotypes, and the admittance of the turning up of such cases has to be admitted from a theoretical standpoint, i. e. on principle, only. The ontogenetical series of L. viridis, L. ocellata, and any other Lacertain species considered, prove that concolority is a reappeared character precisely only with respect to the uniformity of the livery, the first, or biogenetically repeated, colour of the hatched young, not being, else, the same as that of the adult. Ancestral coloration appears to be, as a rule, rather dark, often dull, whilst the modern one uses to be lighter, and bright. (Dull coloration occurs, however, in so-called „olivaceous" forms (10, p. 7—8), which, in spite of such dull tints, are typically progressive, olivaceism being due to the advancing obliteration of pattern.) — On account of such comparative record we may state that L. princeps represents the most advanced stage to be reached in such development of the Lacertid livery as was followed by the group of the Massive Lizards. L. princeps shows — so far as may be judged from the scanty material we dispose of — no tendency toward the production of a piqueté type, and, in this respect too, it differs from L. viridis. But it disagrees also with L. ocellata, in not showing any trace of „blind" ocellation. On the other hand, however, it agrees with certain members of both of these species, in having produced a concolor livery which is evidently reiterated, a tendency carried into effect in the himatologically most modernized viridis