262 Dr. A. Giinther on Reptiles and Fishes 



main collection from the Ogowe River. These will be also 

 embodied in the present paper, whilst the marine species, 

 being all well known, are omitted. A case containing the 

 fishes of Lake Aznigo, which Miss Kingsley visited with 

 the special object of obtaining its fishes, was unfortunately 

 lost by the upsetting of a boat. 



Thirty years ago scarcely anything but the name was 

 known of the Ogowe River ; but between 1860 and 1870 

 French ofiicials and traders began to trace its course inland, 

 discovering a long stretch of rapids in its middle course which 

 render navigation dangerous and, at places, impossible to any 

 vessel larger than a boat. Among those earlier explorers an 

 Englishman, the late Mr. R. B. N. Walker, took a pro- 

 minent part *, making two expeditions in 1866 and 1873, 

 and penetrating to Lope, in the Okanda country. The survey 

 of the upper parts of the river was completed by Messrs. de 

 Brazza and Balay. 



All tliat was known before the year 1860 of the reptiles 

 and fislies of the Gaboon country has been collected by 

 Aug. Dumeril in his memoir " Reptiles et Poissons de 

 I'Afrique occidentale," in Arch. Mus. vol. x. I find that in 

 the list at the end of his memoir he mentions eight fresliwater 

 fishes from Gaboon, all being from the littoral portion of 

 the country. In 1867 t I described the collection made by 

 Walker on the Ogowe, adding seventeen species to its fauna, 

 ten of which were new. This list was increased by six others 

 found by Buchholz and determined by Peters (MB. Berlin. 

 Akad. 1876, p. 244). Two years later M. Sauvage com- 

 menced to publish the results of his examination of the 

 materials that had accumulated in the Paris Museum (Bull. 

 Soc. Philom. 1878, pp. 90-103). giving a complete account of 

 the then knowledge of this fisii-fauna in his memoir " Etude 

 sur la Faune ichthyologique de I'Ogooue," in N. Arch. Mus. 

 iii. 1880. In it he enumerates thirty-seven species, a part of 

 which, however, he knew only from the papers of his prede- 

 cessors. This number has been increased by him in a last 

 supplementary list to forty-six (Bull. Soc. Zool. France, ix. 

 1884). 



In the present paper I have added to the Gaboon fauna from 

 Miss Kingsley's collection the following sixteen species: — 



Oobius ceneofuscuSj Gthr. 

 Eleotris senegalensis^ Stdchr. 



* Bull. Soc. g^oor. Paris, 1879, p. 114. 



•^ Ann. & Miig. Nat. Hist. 1867, xx. p. 10f>. lu tbis paper the uame 

 of the river is misspelt Ogome. 



