To GEORGE B. EMERSON, ESQ. 



My Dear Sir : 



MOST reluctantly do I offer you the accompanying Report upon the 

 Reptiles of Massachusetts. Having devoted the greater part of the 

 leisure time I could claim, since the commencement of my duties as a 

 Zoological Commissioner, to an investigation of our Fishes, as being 

 the more extended and far more important branch, I have, without 

 neglecting any opportunity which could be presented by friends 

 and correspondents, been unable to give our reptiles that careful at- 

 tention and study, which can alone satisfy the searcher after facts. 

 Descriptions of every species of reptile of which I have any knowledge 

 in the State, having however been prepared as they were received, 

 although with very different degrees of diffuseness, I now collect to- 

 gether and present them, conscious that, knowing the untoward cir- 

 cumstances under which I have labored, my scientific friends, at least, 

 will overlook many imperfections. 



The catalogue of our reptiles contained in Professor Hitchcock's 

 Survey, prepared by Dr. Smith, of Sutton, contains most of our spe- 

 cies, and was evidently drawn up with care ; but as he has given no 

 descriptions by which we may judge of his accuracy, I have felt at 

 liberty, when a species has been catalogued which clearly should not 

 be, or which the best herpetologists in our country, well acquainted 

 with the reptiles of New England, have never seen in our latitude, to 

 omit it. 



Thus we find catalogued the " Tcstudo scabra." This error may 

 have been produced by Say's incorrectly including this species in a 

 paper " On the fresh water and land Tortoises of the United States," 

 published in the fourth volume of the Journal of the Academy of Natu- 

 ral Sciences. The species he considered the " scabra," is the " in- 

 sculpta" 



The " Testudo Pennsylvania" is plainly confounded with the 

 " Sternothaerus odoratus" a widely-distributed species. 



The " Coluber striatulus" of that catalogue, I have also omitted ; 

 not merely because I have not met with it myself, but because my 

 friend Dr. Pickering, an accomplished naturalist, thoroughly versed in 

 the herpetology of New England, assures me, he not only never met 

 with it here, but never heard of its having been found here, it being 

 strictly a southern species. 



