BATRACH1ANS AND LAND REPTILES OF THE 

 BAHAMA ISLANDS 



BY 



LEONHARD STEJNEGER, 



Curator, Division of Reptiles and Batrachians, U. 8. National Museum. 1 



INTRODUCTION. 



The present account of the terrestrial herpetological fauna of the Bahama 

 Islands is the result of a request by Dr. George B. Shattuck for a general 

 herpetological sketch of the archipelago from a zoogeographical standpoint. 

 Realizing the inadequacy of the material hitherto gathered for an attempt of 

 this kind, I undertook the writing of this article with considerable reluctance. 

 The batrachians and reptiles of the Bahamas are only very imperfectly known, 

 as collections have been made in not more than fifteen of the numerous islands 

 which compose the archipelago. Moreover, the islands from which reptiles 

 have been recorded are very unequally explored. Thus we know now fourteen 

 species from the small island of New Providence, while from the big island of 

 Inagua only five species are recorded. As a matter of fact, not a single island 

 has been thoroughly explored, and the circumstance that New Providence stands 

 out with such a preponderance of species is only due to the fact that practically 

 everybody who has collected in the archipelago visited that island and spent 

 most of the time there. Under such circumstances generalizations must be 

 made and accepted with the utmost caution, and it should be distinctly under- 

 stood that whatever of the kind may be submitted in the following account 

 must be received as preliminary statements only, subject to later revision 

 when we shall know the Bahama land fauna better. 



The Director of the Expedition of the Geographical Society of Baltimore 

 had hoped to remedy this unfortunate state of affairs, but owing to unfavor- 



1 By permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 



