4i6 SISTAKES. 



improved upon by fifty naturalists, and are still undergoing 

 renomination as new observers discover closer alliances with 

 one or another family. This is particularly the case in 

 America, where a nomenclature entirely differing from our 

 own is often adopted. It will probably be the same in 

 Australia as the science of ophiology advances and as 

 native naturalists increase. Says Krefft, in allusion to these 

 commingling features and many synonyms : ' It is difficult 

 for even the scholar to master the vexatious question of 

 snake classification.' Add to the scientific names an equal 

 number of vernacular ones, and we encounter a list sufficient 

 to dismay the merely lukewarm student at the very outset. 



Let me here suggest the utility of first getting at the 

 viearwig of scientific terms as an immense assistance towards 

 fixing them in the memory. In the construction of generic 

 and specific names some peculiarity is, or should be, de- 

 scribed. This I have endeavoured to keep before the reader 

 throughout this volume ; and by first looking at the meaning 

 of the word, it is at once simplified, while that peculiar 

 feature for which it is named is also grasped. Occasionally 

 a name baffles us, it is true, and one fails to see cause or 

 reason in it ; but this is an exception. Other names without 

 apparent reason are from persons, as, for instance, when a 

 Mr. Smith' thinks to immortalize himself by calling a snake 

 Coluber sinithii. Probably the next observer would find 

 this too general to be of much use, and discover some 

 peculiarity more worthy of a specific. 



Not long ago, when Lacerda was experimenting with 

 our distinguished ophidian, the ' Curucucu ' {BotJirops or 

 Lachesis rhoviheatci), it was variously introduced to the 



