CHAPTER X 



Reptiles in the West Indies 



M, 



.ANY years ago I acquired a strong impression that 

 the number of species of reptiles and amphibians on the 

 Greater Antilles was distinctly limited, and for years I made 

 the serious mistake of interpreting as indvidual variants, or 

 different sexes, adults and young specimens which in re- 

 aHty have proved to be totally distinct species. A great 

 deal of the proof concerning the true state of affairs is due 

 to a former student of mine of whom I am inordinately 

 proud. Professor Emmett Reid Dunn of Haverford Col- 

 lege. But years ago in Cuba my friend Dr. Charles T. 

 Ramsden tried to set me right. He insisted that I was not 

 recognizing a sufficient number of frogs of a certain genus 

 when we were preparing to write a book together on the 

 reptiles and amphibians of Cuba.^ 



I began to err in this way most conspicuously on our 

 first trip to Jamaica in 1909. We went there after a rather 

 long stay in the Canal Zone. We had been seeing a lot of 

 the Gorgas family — the Colonel, as he was then, Mrs. 

 Gorgas, and Aileen. We had all been to Chile together 

 and when I came back to work in the Board of Health 

 Laboratory at the Canal Zone, the General and Mrs. 



^I know that I was unconsciously influenced by what 

 Gunther and Boulenger had written when Garman multiplied 

 the species of Lesser Antillean lizards. Time proved that Garman 

 was entirely correct. 



