NEW GUINEA. 55 



It will be seen from what has been written that the snakes are, as one might 

 expect, decidedly more characteristic of the area in which they occur than are the 

 lizards. In the first place, among the lizards the number of genera which are 

 wide-ranging are far larger; and in the second place, few of these genera can be 

 picked out as being distinctly of Australian affinity as compared to tho.se found 

 on other islands to the westward. Thus, excluding Thecadactylus, which has 

 no affinities hereabouts at all, we have five genera of lizards which we may con- 

 sider as being essentially Papuan and with no marked affinities either Malayan 

 or Australian; while six genera may be considered as essentially Malayan. On 

 the other hand, two only among the lizards show predominant Australian rela- 

 tionships. 



Among the snakes, however, while there are eight genera which may be 

 considered Malayan, still four of these are of almost certainly widespread acci- 

 dental dispersal; while the remaining four form but a comparatively incon- 

 spicuous part of the whole ophidian fauna. Of the eight wholly Papuan genera, 

 four are obviously of direct Austrahan derivation, while the others are strongly 

 differentiated from relations on either side. There remain, besides, four genera, 

 not wholly confined to the island, which are conspicuous Austrahan entities in 

 the Papuan fauna, only one of them reaching as far as the island of Ceram in the 

 Moluccas; while still another genus of southern aflfinity, Micropechis, occurs in 

 New Guinea and on the Solomon Islands. 



The snakes are almost as strongly what we would call Australian as are those 

 of that country itself, although many of the Papuan species occur only in Queens- 

 land, that part of Australia which was most recently associated with it, and 

 which we have elsewhere spoken of as forming, zoologically speaking, almost 

 an integral part of New Guinea itself. 



Before leaving the reptiles, it is perhaps worth while to point out one record 

 which may be doubted. It is a remarkable coincidence that Gymnodactylus 

 marmoratus (Dum. & Bibr.) should occur in just that part of New Guinea alone 

 to which Javanese coolies have been brought for plantation work; so that we 

 may consider that this Javanese species has in all probability been introduced 

 into New Guinea in almost exactly the same way that the Papuan Hijla 

 dolichopsis (Cope) has come fortuitously to Java by human agency. 



The amphibians have been so completely discussed by Dr. P. N. van Kam- 

 pen in several of his recent papers that there seems no reason for giving more than 

 the briefest outline of the conditions which we find among them. Dr. van 

 Kampen has treated this part of the fauna with its remarkable zoogeographical 



