XI 



relate to them. Sir H. Barkly has promised to forward 

 to the Society a copy of the work on its completion. 



The following are extracts from his letter, relative to 

 the information he has been able to obtain at the British 

 Museum and at Kew relative to the Fauna and Flora 

 of '' Eound Island. " 



" The Palmiste Gargoulette, ' he says/ Dr. Hooker has 

 at last satisfied himself is the HyopTiorbe Amaricaulis 

 of Van Martius' and other.-i ; the habitat of which had 

 never been previously clearly ascertained. 



" With respect to the Fauna, I spent a morning lately 

 with Dr. Giinther at the British Museum and got much 

 information. 



" He refers all the snakes we collected to one and the 

 same species (the difference of size and colouring been due 

 to age and sex) as it was furnished forty or fifty years 

 ago from a head in the Paris Museum;, but of which no 

 other or perfect specimen was known. 



'^ Dr. Giinther will soon contribute a complete descrip- 

 tion of it to the Zoological Society, and it will be figured 

 in the proceedings. 



" The only other snake was a small dried one given 

 me by Ool. Pike and which I must have been mistaking 

 in supposing he stated to have come from Eound Island 

 as it proves to be a species which is peculiar to Seychelles. 



'^ The Lizards are also reduced by Dr Giinther to 

 two : the Scincus Telfairi, and the Gongylus Bojeri. 



" Though the number of Hound Island Eeptiles is thus 

 more limited than I supposed, two curious features still 

 remain. It has a genus of snakes of which no other species 

 is known and whose nearest congener, Dr Giinther con- 

 siders is only found in Loyalty Islands in the South Sea, 

 and its ordinary Lizard is peculiar to its own shores and 

 to distant Madagascar and not in existence either in 

 Mauritius or Bourbon close-by. " 



