EKTS THEBAICUS. 239 
Analysis of foregoing Table. 
Largest male 475 millim. Largest female 645 millim. 
Highest number of ventrals 192 5 &> 3 • Karnak and Suakin. 
„ „ caudals 2S juv. Sualdn. 
Lowest number of ventrals 179 cf . Fayum. 
„ „ caudals 21 ?. Tel el Amarna. 
Range of ventrals 179-192= ] 3. 
„ caudals 21-28= 7. 
Highest number of scales 52 5 • Tokar. 
Lowest „ „ 43 <5 & juv. Karnak and Suakin. 
Range of scales 43-52= 9. 
6 males, 10 females, and 1 juv. 
When studying the descriptions given by Hasselquist and Linnaeus in the ' Iter 
Palaestinum ' of A. jaculus and A. colubrinus, one is struck by the fact that the 
particulars they give regarding the tails of these two species correspond to the features 
presented by the same parts of E. jaculus and E. thebaicus, both of which occur 
in Lower Egypt. Although the descriptions of A. jaculus and A. colubrinus do not 
supply any more details by which the two can be recognized, we are not entitled to 
conclude that Hasselquist and Linnaeus were merely describing the same species twice 
over, but are rather led to believe that they had before them the two species found 
in Lower Egypt, the essential differences of which they had failed to express. I am 
therefore disposed to the supposition that the A. colubrinus represents the Eryx now 
known as E. thebaicus. 
As the type specimen of A. jaculus appears in Linnaeus's Catalogue of the Museum of 
King Adolphus Frederick, at Drottningholm, I wrote to Professor F. A. Smitt, of the 
Stockholm Museum, asking him to be so good as let me know what had become of the 
King's Museum. He informed me that when it was dispersed, in the beginning of the 
century, it was divided into two parts, one of which, for the most part the dried specimens, 
went to the University of Upsala, and the other to the Museum of the Academy of 
Sciences at Stockholm, at present known as the Eoyal Museum of Natural History, 
and he added that the latter Institution had had transferred to it the serpents from the 
voyage of Hasselquist, which had served as the type specimens of the Linnean species 
Coluber situla, C. jugularis, C. kaje, and Anguis jaculus, and that, according to an old 
catalogue, it also possessed the Linnean type specimens of 73 other species of serpents. 
In view of the existence of these four Linnean types, said to be from Egypt, I deputed 
Mr. P. J. Smit, the artist who has illustrated this work, to proceed to Stockholm to 
make drawings of them and of any other types of Linnean species of Egyptian snakes 
that might possibly be at Stockholm or at Upsala. I had hoped also that he might 
perchance find the type of A. colubrinus, but unfortunately it no longer exists. 
A species allied to E. thebaicus, viz. E. muelleri, Blgr. 1 , has been described from 
1 Ann. & Mag. N. H. (6) ix. 1892, p. 74; Cat. Snakes B. M. i. 1893, p. 128, pi. v. fig. 2. 
