Guide to the Zoological Collections of the Raffles Museum, Singapore  (English, Paperback, (Singapore) Raffles Museum)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: REPTILES. The Reptiles form the third class of the back-boned animals or Vertebrates. The Mammals and Birds which we have just passed, have a covering of fur or feathers respectively, necessary to keep their warm blood at a constant temperature. In the cold-blooded Vertebrates, the Reptiles, Amphibians and Fishes, no such covering is required, and they have scales or shields instead, horny ones in the case of Reptiles, bony ones in Fishes, or even a bare skin, as in Amphibians. The Reptiles readily group themselves into four orders : (1) Chelonia : Turtles and Tortoises ; (2) Crocodiles ; (3) Lizards ; (4) Snakes. All these four orders are well represented in Malaya, in fact in superabundance. CHELONIA. The most characteristic feature of the Turtles and Tortoises is their bony shell consisting of an upper half (carapace) and a lower half (plastron) which encases the body. This bony shell is made up of a number of separate plates which are immovably united with the thoracic vertebrae and the ribs in all Chelonians, except in the Leathery Turtle. There the vertebrae and ribs are free, and this turtle forms therefore a section by itself. The bony shell is in the great majority of cases covered by horny scales or shields. The exception form the Leathery Turtle and the Soft Turtles. In the marine Chelonians, generally called Turtles, the limbs are paddle-shaped and either clawless (Leathery Turtle) or provided with one or two claws only. The Fresh-water Turtles (or 'Soft Turtles') have only the three inner toes clawed, whilst the terrestrial Chelonians, generally called Tortoises, have properly developed toes and four or five claws. None of the Chelonians have any teeth, differing thus from all other Reptiles. Instead they have their jaws covered with horny sheaths. The gen...