Notes on Hemidactylus tropidolepis Mocq. 



By 

 Lars Gabriel Andersson, Stockholm. 



With 4 Text-figures. 



A Hemidactylus from Tanga, German East Africa (A. Hoffmann) 

 whioli I liave received for identification from Mr. Ed. Lampe, Museum- 

 kustos, Wiesbaden, has caused the following notes on this very interesting 

 species, especially regarding its relationship to allied species, which 

 question already has been discussed by Tornier (Deutsch- Ost- Afrika, 

 Bd. III, Lief. 3, p. 10 — 1 1), and also mentioned by Lönnberg (Piept. 

 Swed. Zool. Exped. Brit. East Africa, K. Vet. Ak. Hand., Bd. 47, 

 Nr. 6, 1911), but hitberto not yet fully solved. 



By the very ebaracteristic lepidosis of the flat, imbricate. and inter 

 se very dissimilar scales (not granules), the specimen is easily distinguished 

 from tlie vast majority of Hemidactylus species, and it approaches evi- 

 dently H. tropidolepis from Somaliland, described by Dr. M. F. Mocquard 

 in «Memoires publ. par Soc. Phil, ä l'occasion du centenaire de sa fondation», 

 Paris 1888, p. 113. In some points, however, it differs from the description 

 of that one as well, and probably I should not have dared to identify 

 it with Mocquard's species, if I had not had for comparison three speci- 

 mens from Njoro in Northern British East Africa, collected by Professor 

 E. Lönnberg, which specimens correspond more closely than this one 

 with the description of H. tropidolepis as well as with regard to the 

 habitat, and which are, at the same time, so like my specimen that 

 they are not to be specifically distinguished from the same. They are 

 to be considered as connecting links between my specimen and Mocquard's 

 type-specimen, which evidently also is the case with the specimen that 

 Tornier has described as type for H. squamulatus from the inferior of 



