IV 
PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR. 
with such costly illustrations as 421 figures, three se- 
parate charts, and two tabular views of their distribu- 
tion and affinities. 
The Translator has therefore restricted himself to 
the General portion of the work ; and has selected from 
the excellent plates of his Author 24 figures, each 
illustrative of one of the genera ; to which he has added 
two figures, for explaining the modern terminology 
of the scuta that defend the heads of Serpents ; and like- 
wise two others, of a remarkable species of Elaps, first 
described by him in J ameson’s Edinburgh Philosophical 
Journal for 1843, The specimen of this Elaps in his 
own collection, the Translator believed to be unique 
— as his correspondence with M, Schlegel shews that 
it was unknown to that great ophiologist : but on 
lately visiting the large, and now well preserved, 
zoological collection in the British Museum, he found 
one other specimen, though mutilated, and without any 
indication of its native country. 
The fear of too much enhancing the price of this 
volume has prevented the republication of more than 
one of the Charts — that which shews the Geographical 
Distribution of the Venomous Snakes. 
The Translator has also added, in different parts of 
the book, a few notes ; which are distinguished from 
those of his Author by brackets — -thus [ ]. 
The Synoptical Eeview of Species, in the present 
publication, will in some measure supply to the Student 
the want of the more ample Descriptive Fart of the 
Original. References are occasionally made, in differ- 
ent parts of this volume, to the Descriptive Fart of 
