IV PREFACE. 



The classification of the Snakes_, which comprise nearly one 

 half of the K-eptilian species known to occur iu India_, is new, 

 and all the descriptions of families, genera, and species have 

 been prepared expressly for the present work. As there is no 

 recent publication with a complete synonymy of the Ophidia, 

 somewhat fuller references to the literature of the subject 

 have been rendered necessary than in the other suborders 

 of Reptiles and Batrachians. 



Two general works on Indian Reptiles have been published 

 before the present volume. The first was ' The Reptiles of 

 British India/ by Dr. A. Giinther, which appeared in quarto 

 and was issued by the Ray Society in 1864; and the second, 

 an octavo ' Descriptive Catalogue of the Reptiles of British 

 India,' by Mr. W. Theobald, published in 1876. In the 

 first, which was founded on the earlier publications of Russell, 

 Cantor, Gray, Blyth, Jerdon, Kelaart, and others, largely 

 supplemented by the author's own researches, the Batrachia 

 were included ; but both the Batrachia and the Hydrophiinee 

 or marine snakes were omitted in Mr. Theobald's book, 

 a great part of which was virtually an abridgment of 

 Giinther's, but with the numerous discoveries and observa- 

 tions of Stoliczka, Beddome, Anderson, and of the author 

 himself added to those of Giinther, many additions by the 

 latter having been made after the publication of his large 

 work on Indian Reptiles. In the present volume the principal 

 additions have been due to the collections of Beddome in 

 Southern India, Fea and Davison in Burma, and of Murray 

 and the Editor of this work in Western India and Baluchistan. 



The limits of the fauna described in Giinther's ' Reptiles of 

 British India ' were wider than those adopted in Theobald's 

 work and in the present, and comprised all South-eastern 

 Continental Asia. The area here accepted as that of the 

 ' Fauna of British India ' has been defined in the Introduction 

 to the Mammalia of the present scries, and may be briefly 



