554 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



Our principal and most important collecting was made in the high 

 and wet region of the El Yunque Mountain, near the eastern end of 

 the island. There, at an altitude of 2,978 a feet, only about 500 feet 

 below the top, we camped for five days during an almost continuous 

 rain and fog, while an equal length of time was spent on Mr. Agostini's 

 hospitable coffee plantation on the eastern slope of the same mountain, 

 at an elevation of 886 feet. One of the first reptiles I collected there 

 was a fine specimen of the large Anolis cuvieri, which seems to be 

 quite rare. In the excessively moist climate near the top, in a trop- 

 ical forest of palms and tree ferns covered with dripping moss and air 

 plants, while a dense matting of wet begonias concealed the ground 

 reeking with dampness, we collected a large number of tree toads, 

 some of which turned out to be new species. Here also we saw the 

 new species of Anolis, the gorgeously emerald green A. evermanni, 

 in its greatest glory. 



Another new species of Anolis we discovered toward the end of our 

 stay in the dry, southern part of the island, in fact, only 3 miles from 

 Ponce, the most important commercial city of the island. The surface 

 of the hills, which rise ont of the coastal plain east of the city, is 

 covered with a white, calcareous, marl-like formation, and here we 

 found this species, Anolis poncensis, which belongs to the same group 

 of the genus as A. pulchellus and A. hrugi. 



Some time was spent in Utuado in a diligent search for Peters's 

 Anolis gundlachi, the types of which, now in the museum at Berlin, 

 are said to have been collected at Utuado. We secured only a single 

 young specimen near that town, which is the lowest altitude in which 

 the species seems to occur. In the higher regions of El Yunque and 

 at Ad juntas we found it abundant. 



That I only obtained one specimen of Celestus pleii, and that we, as 

 well as Mr. Baker and others of the Fish Hawk party, entirely failed 

 to secure a single specimen of Mabuya sloanii is less extraordinary, 

 for doubtless the scarcity of these purely terrestrial species is due 

 to the mongoose, which now infests the whole island and in places is 

 exceedingly common. 



This ferocious little animal is also responsible for the present com- 

 parative infrequency of snakes in the island. Formerly snakes were 

 common enough, for as late as 1835 Dr. Moritz found them so numer- 

 ous that in places one could hardly make a step without seeing sev- 



«My own aneroid measurements gave for our camp an altitude of 2,863 feet and 

 for the top of El Yunque 3,351 feet. On the latest map of Porto Rico issued by the 

 U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (No. 920, December, 1901) the height of El Yunque 

 as obtained by triangulation is given as 1,062 meters, or 3,485 feet, consequently 

 134 higher than found by me. Accepting the latter altitude as correct, and distribut- 

 ing the error proportionally, the altitude of our camp may be assumed to have been 

 2,978 feet above sea level. 



