BISMARCK ARCHIPELAGO. 57 



Bismarck Archipelago. 



When, many years ago, the Rev. G. Brown began to send reptiles from the 

 Duke of York Island (now called New Lauenburg) to the British museum, it 

 became at once evident that a local fauna of the very highest interest was being 

 made known. This small island — lying between islands that were formerly called 

 New Britain and New Ireland, but have been renamed by Germany New Pom- 

 merania and New Mecklenburg — was the site of a mission, and for a long time 

 the fauna of this region was known only from the specimens sent back from this 

 mission station. Since that time, however, the region has been seized by Ger- 

 many, in spite of the fact that she had no valid claims based upon discovery here 

 or elsewhere in the Pacific; and since then collecting in the whole group now 

 known as the Bismarck Archipelago has gone on quite extensively, with the ex- 

 ception that from the island of New Mecklenburg itself no records are forthcom- 

 ing. In 1909 Franz Werner published an extensive paper upon the reptiles and 

 batrachians of the Bismarck Archipelago (Mitt. Mus. nat. Berlin, 1900, 1, p. 1- 

 132, 46 text figures). Referring to this, we find that there is a fauna here resem- 

 bling closely that occurring upon Ne w Guinea, but lacking the Australian facies, 

 which become so evident in the Torres Strait region of Papua itself. Thus we 

 find six wide-ranging Gekkos, none of them of special importance; whilst among 

 the agamids occur two Papuan species of Gonyocephalus, and a genus and spe- 

 cies not known from anywhere else, namely, Diptychodera lobata Bttgr. Only 

 a single Varanus, the wide-ranging V. indicus (Daudin), is recorded; while we 

 find no less than eleven scincids, of what we have called in general terms Lygo- 

 soma. One of these, -Emom impar (Werner), is autogenous. Many of the other 

 species are wide-ranging; but still others occur simply on the near by mainland 

 of New Guinea; and one, Rio-pa albofasciolatum (Gthr.), reaches also to Queens- 

 land and the Solomons, occurring on New Guinea as well. This species, how- 

 ever, is a rather rare one; and a form of Riopa is not one which by its habits is 

 likely to be subject to artificial transport through the agency of man. 



The snakes, as one would expect, are even more differentiated than are the 

 lizards. There are three species of Typhlops, none of which is found elsewhere. 

 This is very remarkable, in that the surrounding regions are phenomenally poor 

 in species of this genus. This may be due, however, to the fact that as yet 

 they are incompletely explored. Python amethystinus (Schneider) occurs, as 

 well as a peculiar genus, Nardoa boa (Schlegel). This group shares with the 

 Solomon Islands Enygrus australis Montrouz., while the two other species 



