ANNALS 
MEDEDELINGEN 
OF THE VAN HET 
J’ransvaat Museum. 
VOL. II. NOVEMBER, 1910. No. 3. 
DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SNAKE, PROSYMNA TRANS= 
VAALENSIS, FROM THE TRANSVAAL 
By John Hewitt. 
PROSYMNA TRANSVAALENSIS, n. sp. 
Rostral large and broad, with angular but not sharp-cutting horizontal 
edge ; a single internasal, a single prefontal, and a single anterior tem- 
poral ; frontal large, more than half the width of the head, not touching 
the eye ; loreal longer than deep ; a single preocular and a single postocular 
(on the right side the supraocular and the postocular are fused together) ; 
six upper labials, the third and fourth entering the eye ; two pairs of 
chin shields, the posterior pair small. 
Dorsal scales smooth, in fifteen rows ; ventrals, 156 ; anal entire ; 
subcaudals, twenty-two (twenty-six in another specimen). Black above, 
with two longitudinal rows of small white spots situated at irregular 
intervals, absent on the tail and the most anterior portion of the body ; 
lower parts whitish. 
Total length 260 mm. ; tail 25 mm. Type specimen from Tzaneen, 
Zoutpansberg District, 31st July, 1908 (W. H. Charter). 
We have also three specimens from Medingen, Klein Letaba (Rev. 
W. Krause). The largest of these agrees with the type, excepting in that 
the supraocular is not fused with the postocular on either side. The two 
other specimens, both juvenile, are aberrant, in that one of them has two 
postoculars and two suboculars, which latter separate the eye from the 
upper labials, whilst in the other specimen labials two and three on the 
right side, and two, three, and four on the left side enter the eye. More- 
over, in these young specimens, the rostral is not so angular as in the 
adults. 
This species is near to Prosy mna ambigua Boc., but on account of the 
single postocular, the slightly increased number of ventrals, and the two 
pairs of chin shields, I believe it to be distinct. 
