14 



their heads ; its deep and great canons trending to the north, 

 covered here and there with groves of palms and zizyphus, and 

 richly cultivated fields ; its nearly sand-choked valleys from the 

 great desert ; the fertile plain of Dhofar with its streams and 

 lakes, its wooded uplands, and its grassy and park-like higher 

 slopes, — offers conditions favourable to reptilian life, of which we 

 now gain some insight, thanks to Mr. Bent's Expedition into the 

 Hadramut. 



Wellsted, who resided some weeks at Makallah, in 1834, says 

 that the term Hadramut is a corruption by Europeans of an 

 Arabic word meaning sudden death, and describes the region as 

 " an extensive valley about 60 miles in length running nearly 

 parallel to the coast." Mr. Bent, the most recent traveller in 

 this part of Arabia, defines the Hadramut in almost similar 

 terms, saying it is " a broad valley running for 100 miles or more 

 parallel to the coast," and that " in the language of the Himyars 

 it meant the enclosure or valley of death." 



The Himyaritic inscriptions discovered by the ofScers of the 

 'Palinurus ' at Hisn GhorabandNakab el Hajar drew the attention 

 of philologists to this part of Arabia, and led Baron Adolph 

 Wrede to make his eventful journey, of 1843, in search of further 

 material for the elucidation of the linguistic and historical 

 problems that had been raised by the decipherment of these 

 inscriptions. Similar reasons also induced Herr Leo Hirsch to 

 enter the Hadramut, in July 1893, and Mr. and Mrs. Bent, in 

 the latter part of the same year. 



In the descriptions of the wanderings of "Wrede and Hirsch 

 we look in vain for any information bearing on the fauna of the 

 region they visited, which is also unfortunately true of the 

 writings of the officers of the ' Palinurus' with the exception of 

 the mention, at rare intervals, and in the most general terms, of 

 antelopes, hyaenas, hares, cats, and rats, and, in equally vague 

 terms, of some birds. 



Mr. and Mrs. Bent, however, started accompanied by a qualified 

 botanical collector, Mr. Lunt, from the Kew Grardens; and by 

 an Arab zoological collector provided by myself, and to whom I 

 had given full instructions regarding the importance of keeping 

 an accurate record of the locality in which each specimen was 

 collected ; but unfortunately he failed to attend to this, and I am 

 therefore not in a position, except in one or two cases, to say 

 more than that the specimens were collected between Makallah 



