74 Report of the President 



tic series during the year are many of unusual interest from 

 the southeastern United States, such as the large soft-shelled 

 turtle, the Florida terrapin, the Florida box turtle, the green 

 tree snake, the diamond-back rattler, the southern pigmy rat- 

 tler, the cotton-mouth, the coral snake and the scarlet king 

 snake. Thus some of the most interesting species of North 

 America are presented in their race relationships, supplement- 

 ing their ecological relationships set forth in the Florida group. 



There has been much satisfactory progress on the study col- 

 lections of the department. A complete checking up and 

 reidentification have been made of all the lizards 



Collections f ^ collection and of all specimens of North 

 and Research . . m, • 



American poisonous snakes. The collection of 



Desmognathus was studied and reidentified by Mr. Dunn dur- 

 ing his recent revision of the genus. The same work has been 

 done for the genus Plestiodon by Mr. Karl P. Schmidt. The 

 amphisbsenians of the collections have passed through the 

 hands of Dr. Leonhard Stejneger in a study for the revision 

 of the family. 



The reference catalogue for reptiles has been completed to 

 date, and a new locality catalogue has been instituted. The 

 continual routine work of accessioning, cataloguing and iden- 

 tifying new material has been carried on. The storage col- 

 lection of dry material has been recatalogued and placed on its 

 permanent shelves. Work has been continued on the bibli- 

 ography catalogue. In this connection the department library 

 has accessioned some 300 additional separates, gifts of the 

 herpetology departments in the various museums of the world. 



A preliminary survey of the Congo collection reports 1,362 

 specimens of lizards (40 species, several new to science), and 

 804 specimens of snakes (70 species, a small proportion 

 new). The collection affords large series, especially among the 

 skinks, which will be of great value in defining species hitherto 

 known from relatively few specimens. Mr. Karl P. Schmidt, 

 of Cornell University, will work especially on the Congo collec- 

 tion of reptiles. Mr. Dunn has already completed his paper 

 on the North Carolina collections made in the summer, which 



