INTRODUCTION. 



The following is a mere List of the Snakes in the Indian 

 Museum ; it has not seemed necessary to give descriptions 

 or the synonymy of the various species, this having in the 

 case of the Indian forms been quite recently, thoroughly 

 done by Mr. Boulenger in his Reptiles of British India ; and 

 in the case of the exotic forms neither are our collections 

 large enough, nor is my knowledge sufficiently extensive for 

 the task. 



I have therefore contented myself with giving in each 

 case the Author of the specific name and a reference to 

 the best description, not necessarily the original one, to 

 which I have been able to get access. 



The following table shows the number of the species and 

 specimens of Indian and Exotic Snakes in the Museum: 



The number of Snakes described by Mi-. Boulenger in his 

 recent work on the Reptiles of the Indian Empire and Ceylon 

 amounts in all to 264, to which number from an examination 

 of the Snakes in the Indian Museum I have been able to add 

 thirteen, of which five are new and eight are exotic species 

 not mentioned in Mr. Boulenger's work,"^ and one species, 

 Dipsas multifasciatus, which had formerly been confused 

 with Dipsas ceylonensis has been discriminated. 



This raises the number of Snakes in the Indian Empire 

 to 278 ; of these, as will be seen from above, the Museum 

 possesses examples of 210 so that there are still 6S defi- 

 ciencies wanting to make the collection of the Museum quite 

 complete. 



Many of these 6S species of which a list will be found 

 below are unique or very rare, and it will probably be 



* The following are the thirteen snakes added to the Tndian Fauna : Ablabes 

 stoliczkao, Simotes purpurascena, Simotes -woodniasoni, Zaoccys tenasseri- 

 mensis, Tropidonotus vibiikari, Trof)idonotas pealii, Tropidonotaa nicobarensia, 

 Tropidonotas trianguligeriis, Dipsas cynodon, Dipsas fiisca, Megaorophis 

 flaviceps, Ainblycephalus caritiatiis and .Viiiblycephalns moellendorfEi, 



