66 ARKIV FÖR ZOOLOGI. BAND 1. 



Linnell, residing in Cameroon, I obtained about a year ago 

 a skull of a large Varanus niloticus from Cape Debundscha, 

 Cameroon. When this had been cleaned I was struck bv the 

 peculiar appearance of its dentition, the molars being very 

 large with rounded crowns which bad a diameter amounting, 

 in tbe largest, to 8 mm. I now instantly perceived tbat 

 the diet of this Varanus must be different from that of the 

 species provided with acute and compressed teeth. As I knew 

 that the fauna of Cameroon was rich in large land-molluscs 

 (Achatina etc.) I made up the hypothesis that such land- 

 molluses must form an important part of the bill of fare of 

 this Varanus and that the rounded molars constituted an 

 adaptation for the crushing of the härd shells of these mol- 

 luses which could not have been effected with pointed and 

 slender teeth. To make sure about this interesting question, 

 I wrote to Mr. Linnell asking him kindly to fnrnish me with 

 material of the intestinal canal of the Cameroon- Varanus, 

 and at the same time to try himself, to observe, and also to 

 ask the negroes about the food of this lizard. I received his 

 reply last autumn, in which he stated that the Varanus-lizsbrå 

 chiefly preyed upon a kind of large land-molluscs which the 

 negroes called »Ka A», and at the same time he most kindly 

 promised to send me specimens of this mollusc as well 

 as the intestinal canal of a couple of lizards preserved in 

 formaline. In the middle of January 1903 this material 

 reached me in Upsala, and I had the pleasure of confirming 

 with my own eyes that my hypothesis mentioned above was 

 quite correct. The land-molluscs named »KaA • and referred to 

 above proved to be a rather large species of Achatina, most 

 likely A. camerunensis d'ailly, as far as I can make o ut 

 without material for comparison, but it is evident that it is 

 not only this species, but also other similar land-molluscs 

 which are eaten by the Varanus. The contents of the two 

 ventricles of this lizard received prove this. One of them 

 contained eight large molluscs, that is the soft bodies of such 

 with only a few small fragments of the shell partly lying 

 loose beside the animals. The other ventricle contained the 

 bodies of two very large Aehatinse, some smaller Helix-like 

 snails and not less than 71 slugs, a lar va of an insect and 

 three grasshoppers. In this case, as well as in the former, the 

 shells had been broken, and only a few small fragments had 



