84 W. Theobald — On Indian and Bnrmese species of Trionyx. [March, 



leaving the correctness of my identification of it with the B. trivittata, Dum. 

 et Bib., an open question, and yet Dr. Gray transfers my description of the 

 animal of the Pegu trivittata to the Indian lineata, a perfectly distinct 

 animal. 



Haedella Thuegi. Under this head in his Appendix to the Catalogue 

 of Shield Reptiles, p. 18, Dr. Gray indulges in a singularly disingenuous piece 

 of criticism, breaking off his quotation of what I wrote, just where my words 

 show that I had anticipated him in removing " Thurgi" from JEmys to 

 Batagur ! Dr. Gray writes (loc, cit.) : — " Mr. Theobald observes that this 

 species is very common at Calcutta, tliough adults are not very easily obtained 

 (the italics are my own). It appears to be more allied to Batagur than 

 JEonys, yet he did not discover that the skull that I had figured as Kachuga 

 Oldhami was the skull of this species," &c. I would remark that Dr. Gray 

 established his spurious species K. Oldhami in March, 1869, whilst the pas- 

 sage Dr. Gray quotes above was published in my Catalogue of Reptiles of 

 the Asiatic Society, Bengal, in 1868 ! The exact words I really wrote are as 

 follows, which I give for comparison with the above : — 



" A very common species at Calcutta, though adults are not very easily ~ 

 got. It appears to me more nearly affined to Batagur than to Emys.'' This 

 was the sum total of my remarks, and it was not till two j^ears later that Dr. 

 Gray pronounces his adhesion to the above view in his Supplement to the 

 Catalogue of Shield Reptiles, p. 58, in the following words under the head of 

 Hardella Thurgi : — 



'• By examining the head of the adult specimen in the British Museum, 

 I have been enabled to prove, what I have long suspected, that Thurgi is a 

 Bataguroid ; and also to identify the skull which I figured as Kachuga Old- 

 Jiami as the skull of this species !" Dr. Gray may truly be congratulated on 

 the complacency with which he refers to his labours on the craniology of the 

 Testudinata when within the compass of a few pages he describes as new 

 species, three old and two of them well-known forms, e. g., Scaphia Falconeri, 

 Gray == Testudo Phayrei, Blyth ; Cachuga Oldhami, Gray =-• Batagur Thurgi^ 

 Gray ; and Kachugu peguensis = Batagur lineata, Gray, as admitted by 

 himself in Supplement to the Catalogue of Shield Reptiles, p. 56, and to 

 crown all his founding his genus Potamochelys on a skull of the common 

 Hmyda ! vide Ann. of 1872, p. 340. 



My reason for so summarily disposing of Dr. Gray's new species Kachuga 

 Oldhami was this : I had examined Dt. Oldham's specimens before the}^ passed 

 into Dr. Gray's hands, and if the new species wa^ really, as stated, founded on 

 one of Dr. Oldham's specimens, I knew it must be founded on one of our com- 

 mon Batagurs, which one, however, I had neither means or leisure to determine^ 



