. INTRODUCTION. 223 



over smooth surfaces both perpendicular and overhanging. In coimtry houses 

 in Cuba they often come to one's reading table creeping daintily to within the 

 sphere of lamplight to catch httle moths and flying ants. In the British Islands 

 the name Wood-slave is generally applied ; while in Spanish it is Santa Lucia 

 upon Porto Rico; and in Cuba, Salamandra, Salamanquita, or Salamanquesa, 

 all obviously based upon the assumption that there is some relationship with the 

 Salamander. The tiny elegans is called Salamanquita de la Vii-gen. It has been 

 suggested that this name is due to the habit of hiding behind pictures on the wall, 

 and in the country in Cuba the only picture is often of the Virgin. The name 

 Sabandija is used in the mountains of Oriente and Central Cuba applied to 

 various species. 



Sphaerodactyls seem in general to lay but a single white egg. Rouiid or 

 slightly oval, it is covered with a hard, brittle chalky shell. The habit of many 

 species of laying in the old termite galleries of rotten logs as well as in other dark 

 moist situations would again seem to enhance the ease with which fortuitous 

 means of transport might act upon the genus. Nevertheless, possibly because 

 the eggs are delicate and sensitive to salt water or any other disturbance, they 

 certainly seem most fragile, there is no evidence to be gathered from the dis- 

 tribution which sets them off from the regular typical West Indian forms. Their 

 dispersal seems to conform to certain more or less known rules — whether the 

 reason for this homogeneous dispersal be found in the even action of flotsam and 

 jetsam bringing all the same immigrants to all the islands as some postulate or in 

 previous changes in the geographic form and relations of the islands as seems 

 much more plausible. 



A word as to the methods pursued in the body of this revision. Great stress 

 is laid on the number of dorsal scales which counted along one single row, equal 

 the distance from the tip of snout to the centre of eye. The best method in 

 making identifications is to verify the count given in the diagnosis by comparing 

 and counting the scales in the figure of the dorsal scalation of each species. Thus 

 the method of making the count can be checked and then applied to an examina- 

 tion of the particular specimen in hand. 



Where there is no occasion to revise or to change the allocations to synonymy 

 made by Boulenger in the Catalogue of Uzards in the British museum (1885, 1) 

 no allusion is made to them and they are accepted as proposed. Differences of 

 opinion and synonyms subsequent to 1885 are given in full. 



It has been found extremely difficult to find stable characters, many of 

 those given in the specific descriptions, although their inclusion is sanctioned by 



