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Show 1904.] LACERTA DEPRESSA OF CAMERANO. 337 L. depressa in the British Museum Catalogue of Lizards*. Should Camerano's species be broken up into several forms, this specimen must be regarded as the restricted type of L. depressa. It is probably from Trebizond, since Boettger's specimens from that locality agree closely with it t ; but it must be noted that specimens from Shusha, E. Karabagli, received from the Senckenberg Museum as L. muralis, var. defilippii Boettger+, belong, in my opinion, to the same variety. Mehely's var. depressa from Shion in Transcaucasia § is also probably the same thing. The second specimen, with larger dorsal scales (51 across the body), with larger and more strongly keeled scales on the tibia, with more strongly raised keels on the caudal scales, and with 18 femoral pores, has been specially selected by Bedriaga as the type of var. rudis. But it is remarkable that no allusion should have been made to its having five anterior labials instead of four, the number unreservedly given in the diagnosis of L. depressa. The specimen from Batoum noticed by Boettger|| is probably correctly referred to this form; it has 5 anterior labials on one side, 4 on the other, and 46 scales across the body. The third specimen answers in all important respects to the figure of L. portschinskii of Kessler 51, from Tiflis, the Russian description of which was translated in 1879 by Bedriaga**. Bedriaga then identified L .portschinskii with L. depressa', he afterwards in his monograph published in 1885, most emphatically repudiated this identification and placed L. portschinskii simply in the synonymy of his L. muralis fusca, whilst regarding L. depressa as a distinct species having much less in common with L. muralis than with L. oxycephala ft. The fourth specimen agrees entirely with the Persian lizards described by De Filippi and by Blanford, and may be referred to the var. defilippii Camerano, of which var. persica Bedriaga, is a synonym. The fifth specimen, as stated above, should be referred to the var. depressa, sensu stricto. Comparing the L. depressa of Werner with these specimens, I find it does not agree with any of them, differing in the shorter limbs, a character emphasised by Werner in his description. But it agrees with specimens from Lake Gokcha which, in my opinion, represent the L. chalybclea of Eichwald (L. muralis, var. saxicola Bedriaga). In the following table I give the measure- * Vol. iii p. 34 (1887). f Ber. Senck. Ges. 1892, p. 141,, 58-60 scales across body, 30-32 gular scales, 8 tibial scales corresponding to 9 orlO dorsals. X L. c. p. 144. These Shusha specimens are regarded by Boettger as connecting the var. defilippii Camer. with the var. raddii Boettg. § Dritte Asiat. Forschungs. Graf. E. Zichy, ii. Zool. p. 54 (1901). || Ber. Senck. Ges. 1889, p. 204. Tr. St. Petersb. Soc. Nat. viii. 1878, p. 160, pi. i. ** Arch. f. Nat. 1879, p. 308. f t The British Museum possesses a quite similar specimen from Elizabethpol, among several received from the St. Petersburg Museum, the largest of which agrees with Eversmann's figure of L. saxicola. P roc. Z ool. Soc.-1904, V ol. II. No. XXII. 22 |