612 



SOME NEW ASIAN SNAKES. 



By 



Captain F. Wall, I.M.S., C.M.Z.S. 

 (With 2 Plates.) 



(Read before the Bombay Natural History Society on 2ith Jan. 1907.) 

 L YCODON FLA VO MACULA TVS, 

 This snake is interesting from the fact that though hitherto unde- 

 scribed it is not, as one might infer, recently discovered. On the con- 

 trary more than one specimen has been preserved in the Bombay 

 Natural History Society's collection for several years labelled as 

 Lycodonjara. It was only when one of these examples came under 

 the notice of Mr. Boulenger at the British Museum that this iden- 

 tification was disputed, and since this time there has been much 

 perplexity regarding these specimens. Mr. Boulenger considered the 

 one he saw merely a variety of Lycodon aulicus. 



Last year Mr. Millard sent me two specimens to identify, and I 

 unhesitatingly pronounced them colour varieties of L.jara, being led 

 into the same error as he and others by the key to the genus Lycodon in 

 Mr. Boulenger's catalogue of snakes in the British Museum (Vol. J., 

 pp. 348-9) which could lead one to no other conclusion. The de- 

 scription, too, in that work accorded perfectly with the specimens 

 referred to me, except in colour, a point I deem of little importance in 

 itself, and always vastly inferior to scale characters. One has only to 

 refer, for instance, to L. aidicus to see how multiform may be the 

 colour and markings of a single species. 



Recently another fine living example of this species reached the 

 Society's rooms from Mrs. C. Hudson, of Dharwar, and this I took to 

 the British Museum for identification. With Mr. Boulenger I 

 examined the type and other specimens of L. jara, and agreed with 

 him that they were different from this specimen. I was also able by a 

 comparison with the specimens of L. aulicus to point out differen- 

 ces between them and this specimen, and to convince that authority 

 that this is a distinct species. 



From L. aulicus it differs thus : — (1) the ventrals are not angulate ; 

 (2) the nasals touch only one supralabial (the 1st), whereas these shields 

 in aulicus almost always touch the 2nd also ; (3) the minute posterior 

 nasal ; (4) colour. 



