602 EEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



Habitat. — In 1881 Dr. Gimdlach wrote that thi.s species had not been 

 observed by him in Porto Rico, but had been sent b}^ Dr. Stahl, who 

 had found it in a house at the capital, San Juan, adding- that "it seems 

 to ])e rare." Dr. Stahl does not give this species in his Fauna of the 

 following year (1882), but on page 71 he mentions that Don Tomas 

 Blanco, a pharmacist in Porto Rico, had met with "another species of 

 the gecko family," which he himself had observed later on in Agua- 

 dilla and other places. It is probably the present species to which he 

 refers. It was not collected by Mr. Baker, nor by any of the Fish 

 Commission naturalists. Dr. Richmond and I were equally unsuc- 

 cessful. However, the species was reported as having been sent from 

 Porto Rico by Latimer as early as 1868, and Boettger mentions two 

 specimens in the Museum Senckenbergianum donated in 1879 by 

 Mr. Carl Knoblauch; Garman also mentions specimens from Porto 

 Rico in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at ('ambridge, Massa- 

 chusetts, and, finally, I have recently examined a specimen in the 

 museum in Hamburg collected by Mr. Herman Engel, in San Juan. 

 //. mahouia is a species of extremely wide distribution. Besides 

 having been found in various other West Indian islands, it occurs in 

 man}^ places in South Ameiica, South Africa, and Madagascar. It 

 has prol)ably been carried to many distant places in ships, and its 

 occurrence in Porto Rico is undoubtedly due to a similar agency. 



Genus SPHyERODACTYLUS " Wagler. 



1830. /S>/icTrocZac<7/Zns Wagler, Nat. Syst. Amph., p. 143 (type /S'. sputator). 



1830. Spher iodacty his GvERiti, Icon. Regne Anim., pi. xiv, fig. 6 (emend.). 



1831. Sphceriodactylus Gray, in Griffith's Anim. Kingd. Synops., p. 52 (emend.). 

 1833. Sphasriodactylus v. d. Hoeven, Handb. Dierk., II, ii p. 344 (emend.). 



The two species of Sjphserodactylus found in Porto Rico and its 

 dependencies may be easily distinguished by the size of the scales, as 

 follows: 



«^. Number of scale rows around the middle of the body about 34-38, 



S. grandisqiuirnis, p. 602. 

 (iK Number of scale rows around the middle of the body about 46-48, 



S. monensis, p. 607. 



SPH/ERODACTYLUS GRANDISQUAMIS,^ new species. 



1863. Sphwriodactylus macrolepis Keinhardt and Luetken, Yid. Meddel. Nat. 

 Foren. (Copenhagen) 1862, pp. 174, 279; authors' separate, pp. 22, 127 

 (part, not of Guenther; island of Vieques). — Peters, Mon. Ber. Berlin 

 Akad. Wiss., 1876, p. 705 (Porto Rico).— Gundlach, Anal. Soc. Espaii. 

 Hist. Nat., X, 1881, p. 308 (Porto Rico) .—Stahl, Fauna Puerto-Rico, 

 1882, pp. 70, 159 (Porto Rico). — Sphxrodactylus m. Garman, Bull. Essex 

 Inst., XIX, 1887, p. 21 (part: Porto Rico). 



(i6(paipa, ball; daKrvAoi, digit. 6 With large scales. 



