INTEOBUCTOEY LETTEE* 
15 
thirty serpents, collected in the vicinity of the Danish 
Fort on the same coast. The southern extremity of 
Africa has been explored by Dutch naturalists, during a 
long series of years. MM. Kuhl, Van Hasselt, Boie, 
and Macklot, touching at Cape Town on their voyage 
to India, there formed collections. Dr Van Horstok, 
during his long residence in that town, employed himself 
in procuring the rarest objects, and has furnished succes- 
sively to our Museum the materials for a Fauna of that 
flourishing colony ; Drs Smuts and Smith also have 
equally contributed to enrich our galleries with many little- 
known African serpents. 
There are, properly speaking, but two countries of the 
vast continent of South America which have been zoolo- 
gically explored ; Brazil and Guyana. A part of the speci- 
mens procured in the travels of M. Natterer, in several 
provinces of the former country, which are deposited in 
the Museum of Vienna, have been communicated to ours. 
The Prince of Neuwied, who visited the eastern coast of 
Brazil, situated between the 13° and 23° of south lati- 
tude, has kindly presented to us duplicates of the reptiles 
collected by him. These examples were followed by the 
late M. Spix, whose travels extended farther to the north, 
along the banks of the Maragnon, to Bahia. A small 
series of the ophidians of Brazil, collected by MM. 
Olfers, Freireiss, and Beske, also form part of the 
Museum of the Netherlands. Several packages of rep- 
tiles from the province of St Paul, have been sent to us 
from Paris by M. Beske of Hamburg, and by M. Boie 
of Kiel. The beautiful and numerous collections which 
our establishment owes to the disinterested care of M. 
Dieperink, residing in Paramaribo, have furnished us 
with the means of making an enumeration of the greatest 
part of the productions of our colony at Surinam. We 
are indebted to the Prince of Musignano, and to Profes- 
sor Troost of Nashville, for the reptiles of North Ame- 
rica, that form part of our Museum. The first has 
brought us a considerable number of specimens, natives 
of the northern provinces of the United States ; the lat- 
ter, settled in the state of Tennessee, has exerted much 
