PREFACE. 



No other order of Eeptiles required so thorough an examination 

 and rearrangement as that of Lizards. The descriptions of nearly 

 two thirds of the species known at present were scattered over the 

 wide range of the literature of the last forty years, and, in conse- 

 quence, except to some very few zoologists, the exact determination 

 of specimens of Lizards had become an impossible task, or, at least, 

 one to which a great risk of failure was attached. By the student 

 of physiogeography the absence of a critical general account of so 

 important a type of Eeptiles was still more seriously felt. 



The first edition of the ' Catalogue of Lizards,' published in the 

 year 1845, was based on a collection containing only one eighth 

 of the number of specimens at present in the Natural History 

 Museum, and, therefore, had long ceased to fulfil its primary 

 purpose, viz. to serve as a guide to the collection. 



Like all the other volumes of the new series of descriptive 

 Catalogues of the Zoological Collections, the present work contains 

 descriptions of, or references to, all the species introduced into the 

 literature. It will consist of three volumes, and may be expected 

 to be completed in 1886, the manuscript of the second volume 

 being far advanced. 



ALBERT GtJNTHEE, 

 Keeper of the Department of Zoology. 

 British Museum, N. H., 

 January 8, 1885. 



