A CONTRIBUTION TO THE ZOOGEOGRAPHY 

 . OF THE EAST INDIAN ISLANDS' 



INTRODUCTION. 



During 1906-1907 I visited the East Indies. A short preliminary account 

 of the trip, with notices of some new species, was pubhshed in the Bulletin of 

 this Museum (Bull. M. C. Z., 1908, 51, p. 313-325). The descriptions of other 

 new species based wholly or in part on the material collected have appeared in 

 the Proceedings of the Biological society of Washington, 190S, 21, p. 39-42, 

 189-190; 1910, 23, p. 89-90, p. 169-170; 1911, 24, p. 15-22. The present paper 

 deals more fully with the collections of reptiles and amphibians. 



NARRATIVE AND ITINERARY. 



It is hardly necessary to give more than a brief outline of the early part of 

 the voyage. Bombay was reached November 2, 1906, via Peninsula and Oriental 

 S. S. Co. ships from Brindisi, via Port Said and Aden. A short time was spent 

 in crossing India, visiting the hills about Darjeeling, the Teesta Valley, and the 

 Sunderbans of Lower Bengal. Rangoon was reached by the ship Bharala 

 belonging to the British India Steam Navigation Company. Visits to Mandalay 

 and Bhamo, at the head of navigation on the Irewady River, with short collecting 

 trips to one or two other localities, completed the work done in Burma. Another 

 ship of the same line was taken to Singapore via Penang. 



In Singapore I was fortunate enough to find a Chinese boy, Ah Woo by 

 name, who became a most faithful servant and a very skilful collector. His 

 slight knowledge of EngUsh, added to a fluency in Malay, made him often helpful 

 as an interpreter, and even at times as a teacher. The Malay language as 

 spoken in the bazaars is not difficult, and a knowledge of sentence formation 

 once gained, proficiency in the language involves only the memorizing of a 

 vocabulary. 



Work in the East Indies began with collecting for a few days about Batavia, 



' Contributions from the Zoological Laboratory of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard 

 College, under the direction of E. L. Mark. — No. 231. 



