222 SPHAERODACTYLUS. 
exact reverse is the case in the West Indies and while we are not constrained to 
lay any very great stress upon the evidence of Sphaerodactylus as bearing a 
relation to the past geographic changes in the region, it is only fair to point out 
that the distribution is not at all haphazard. The species are generally well 
defined by long isolation and bear evidence that no frequent interbreeding by 
the arrival of fresh stock through flotsam and jetsam has taken place. This is as 
evident on little Navassa, for example, where the species population must be 
very small, as upon Cuba where it is numberless. It is, therefore, reasonable 
and conservative to state that with the exception of notatus (which has obviously 
been carried about and by the condition in the Bahamas as yet very incompletely 
known), the distribution of the Antillean sphaerodactyls bears no evidence within 
itself of being the result of fortuitous dispersal. While sphaerodactyls are not 
recorded from certain islands, e.g. Saba, Redonda, Nevis, the Turks and Caicos 
Archipelagos, it should be strongly emphasized that these islands are as yet very 
imperfectly known and there is no reason to suppose that the genus will not be 
found to occur, especially in the northeastern Lesser Antilles. 
The majority of the species are found more abundantly upon the coastal 
plain of the various islands than in the interior highlands. Dense forest appears 
to offer a less suitable environment than open, cultivated, and inhabited lands. 
Nevertheless, while collecting Peripatus near the Cuna Cuna Pass in the Blue 
Mountains of Jamaica, I found Sphaerodactylus goniorhynchus abundantly under 
rotten logs to the very summit, but neither argus nor richardsonw was ever seen. 
Some species have found that human habitations offer so safe and favorable an 
environment that now they are rarely seen in other situations. Thus elegans and 
cinereus occur in great abundance behind pictures on the wall, behind and in 
furniture, in chinks and crannies of walls and wainscoting and in similar places 
far more often, certainly probably in the ratio of one hundred to one as compared 
with the number of individuals now living out of doors. The fact that so many 
species prefer lowland to highland habitat and some indeed even frequent the 
windrows of pebbles and seaweed at high-tide mark, makes it the more remark- 
able that all the species are so definitely fixed in their distribution. 
Little of interest can be written regarding the habits of creatures which live 
such colourless lives. They are, of course, harmless though one cannot persuade 
many West Indian natives that this isso. Their beauty of form, of skin, and of 
movement is very great. The integument of many species has a peculiar and 
beautifully silky quality in life and the eyes of these little creatures glisten like 
tiny jewels. They move about with funny little gliding jerks and pass readily 
