PREFACE, 
Tue Collection of Snakes in the British Museum was catalogued 
partly in the year 1849, partly in 1858, in two 12mo volumes 
of respectively 125 and 281 pages. It contained at that time about 
500 species represented by 3500 specimens, and ranked as one of 
the two richest collections of Ophidians. However, the appearance 
of those two little Catalogues led to the very fertile cooperation 
of many Naturalists and Collectors in the Tropics; and the influx 
of additional species was so continuous as to necessitate the 
issue of supplementary reports, which were published in the ‘ Annals 
and Magazine of Natural History’ and in the ‘ Proceedings of the 
Zoological Society,’ and continued with tolerable regularity to the 
year 1872. By that time the total number of species in the 
Museum amounted to 920, and that of the typical specimens to 360. 
Although no opportunity of adding to the Collection has been lost 
since that year, the high percentage of the new species acquired 
in former years could no longer be maintained, 
Until the completion of the work, which will consist of three 
volumes, it is not possible to give more than an approximate 
estimate of the extent of the Collection at the present date. To 
judge from this first volume, the entire Collection will probably be 
found to contain not less than 1200 species represented by about 
10,000 specimens. 
The present edition of the Catalogue has much stronger claims 
to being regarded as a Monograph of the suborder Ophidia than 
its predecessor, in which little or no reference was made to 
species not represented in the Museum, The principles on which 
