The Habits of Malay Reptiles. 
By H. N. RIDLEY. 
In puttiug together these few notes on the habits of some 
of our reptiles, | would commence by calling attention to the 
very valuable paper on the Reptiles and Batrachians of the 
Malay peninsula by Lieut. 5. S. Flower, published in the Pro- 
ceedings of the Zoological Society for December, 1896, page 
856. ‘This paper gives a list of all species recorded from this 
country, and I have made much use of it, The earliest important 
paper on the subject is that by Dr. Cantor, published in 1847, 
and a good number of kinds mentioned by him have not been 
met with since. Some were perhaps erroneously identified or 
wrongly localised, and some perhaps have disappeared. Others, 
however, have doubtless been overlooked, and that is especially 
the case in the tortoises, and the smallest lizards. Snakes are 
often preserved by amateurs, as are the showier lizards, but 
the other reptiles often escape coliection. No better instance 
of this is that of the big Gavial TYomistoma, which was really 
first recorded as belonging to our fauna in 1896, by Wray, 
although it appears to be by no means rare in the Pahang and 
Perak rivers, and must at times have been the victim of the 
sportsman long ere this. 
TORTOISES. 
There are several kinds of land tortoises to be met with here, 
and one of the commonest is the jungle tortoise Geomyda spinosa. 
It is rather a small tortoise about eight inches long, and of a 
dull red colour, just the colour of the rotting leaves in the 
Streams of the jungle where it lives. Its head and feet are black, 
with pink spots. When young the edge of its shell is armed 
with spiny processes, whence its name, but these disappear as_ it 
grows older. It seems never to leave the damper parts of the 
forests, and is seldom far away from the small streams. These 
tortoises eat all kinds of vegetable substances, fruit of all kinds 
and leaves, and I once found tivo small ones greedily devouring 
