Vol. 30, pp. 97-104 May 23, 1917 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



NOTES ON THE HERPETOLOGY OF THE VIRGIN 



ISLANDS. 



BY THOMAS BARBOUR. 



In continuance of a policy, long since announced, of making 

 a complete survey of the vertebrate fauna of the West Indies, 

 the Museum of Comparative Zoology sent expeditions this 

 winter again to Cuba and the Island of Pines, also to Porto 

 Rico and the Virgin Islands. Mr. James Lee Peters spent sev- 

 eral months exploring the latter group and visited several islands 

 which have not been visited by a zoologist for many years. He 

 returned to recite the old familiar story of a fauna already sadly 

 depleted and fast disappearing. He found the mongoose exces- 

 sively abundant upon St. Thomas, St. John and Tortola; he 

 learned that once long ago it had been introduced upon Virgin 

 Gorda, but there it has been completely eradicated mirabile 

 dictu, and important if true. This extermination is a unique 

 feat and one for which Virgin Gorda deserves real fame. 

 Anegada is and has ever been quite free, so also Jost van Dyke 

 and Water Island, Mosquito Island, Ginger Island, and others 

 of the smaller outlying Keys. 



Most of the islands which Peters visited are similar in general 

 topography. Hilly, and once densely wooded, Tortola, and 

 Virgin Gorda are not strikingly different from St. Thomas. 

 Anegada, on the other hand, belongs to another system — the 

 outer Antillean arc of Suess — and is low, flat, arid, and wholly 

 similar in general characteristics to almost any one of the Ba- 

 hamas. 



These northern Virgin Islands are washed by a northward- 

 drift current. W. C. Fishlock, Esq., curator of the British 

 Experiment Station upon Tortola, told Peters that after the 

 terrific eruption of Mt. Pelee upon Martinique that dugout 



24— Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 30, 1917. (97) 



