PEEFACE. 



The Collection of Snakes in the British Museum was catalogued 

 partly in the year 1849, partly in 1858, in two 12mo volumes 

 of respectively 125 and 281 pages. It contained at that time about 

 500 species represented by 3500 specimens, and ranked as one of 

 the two richest collections of Ophidians. However, the appearance 

 of those two little Catalogues led to the very fertile cooperation 

 of many Naturalists and Collectors in the Tropics ; and the influx 

 of additional species was so continuous as to necessitate the 

 issue of supplementary reports, which were published in the ' Annals 

 and Magazine of Natural History ' and in the ' Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society,' and continued with tolerable regularity to the 

 year 1872. By that time the total number of species in the 

 Museum amounted to 920, and that of the typical specimens to 360. 

 Although no opportunity of adding to the Collection has been lost 

 since that year, the high percentage of the new species acquired 

 in former years could no longer be maintained. 



Until the completion of the work, which will consist of three 

 volumes, it is not possible to give more than an approximate 

 estimate of the extent of the Collection at the present date. To 

 judge from this first volume, the entire Collection wiU probably be 

 found to contain not less than 1200 species represented by about 

 10,000 specimens. 



The present edition of the Catalogue has much stronger claims 

 to being regarded as a Monograph of the suborder Ophidia than 

 its predecessor, in which little or no reference was made to 

 species not represented in the Museum. The principles on which 



