Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Reptilia and Batrachia).djvu/8

 The classification of the Snakes, which comprise nearly one half of the Reptilian species known to occur in India, is new, and all the descriptions of families, genera, and species have been prepared expressly for the present work. As there is no recent publication with a complete synonymy of the Ophidia, somewhat fuller references to the literature of the subject have been rendered necessary than in the other suborders of Reptiles and Batrachians.

Two general works on Indian Reptiles have been published before the present volume. The first was 'The Reptiles of British India,' by Dr. A. Gunther, which appeared in quarto and was issued by the Ray Society in 1864; and the second, an octavo 'Descriptive Catalogue of the Reptiles of British India,' by Mr. "W. Theobald, published in 1876. In the first, which was founded on the earlier publications of Russell, Cantor, Gray, Blyth, Jerdon, Kelaart, and others, largely supplemented by the author's own researches, the Batrachia were included ; but both the Batrachia and the Hydrophiinae or marine snakes were omitted in Mr. Theobald's book, a great part of which was virtually an abridgment of Giinther's, but with the numerous discoveries and observations of Stoliczka, Beddome, Anderson, and of the author himself added to those of Giinther, many additions by the latter having been made after the publication of his large work on Indian Reptiles. In the present volume the principal additions have been due to the collections of Beddome in Southern India, Fea and Davison in Burma, and of Murray and the Editor of this work in Western India and Baluchistan.

The limits of the fauna described in Gunther's 'Reptiles of British India' were wider than those adopted in Theobald's work and in the present, and comprised all South-eastern Continental Asia. The area here accepted as that of the 'Fauna of British India' has been defined in the Introduction to the Mammalia of the present series, and may be briefly