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Show 189 DR. J. ANDERSON ON INDIAN REPTILES. [Feb. 21, The Bengal and Amherst specimens have all twenty-five rows of scales. A female from the Hoogley, measuring 39" 6"', and the tail 6" 9'", contains twenty-five fully'developed young; eighteen of them have two infraoculars, only five have one infraocular ; one has two infraoculars on one side and only one on the other, and in another the infraocular is confluent with the lowest postocular. In none are the nasals confluent; and all have twenty-five rows of scales. The teeth are wonderfully well developed for the size of the young, which on an average measure 7" 10'" in total length, the tail measuring 1" 6'". This female has 143 ventrals; caudals 56. In the adults of this species that have come under my observation, there has always been a narrow black longitudinal band from behind the eye along the side of the neck to the first black cross bar. In the young this band commences from the tip of the snout, and passes through the eye and further along the neck than in the majority of adults. There are also in the young a short, narrow, longitudinal black line on each side of the ventral line, on the nape of the neck, and a black spot on each superciliary. The upper labials are only as it were dusted with brown, while the chin and lower labials are spotted with black. There are a series of black spots along the side and more or less connected with the cross bars, which are very indistinct and imperfect in by far the majority. The black on the ventral aspect is very intense, and prolonged up the sides. It is a curious fact that all these young specimens in utero were shedding their skins. FERANIA SIEBOLDII (Schlegel); Gthr. I.e. p. 284. Homalopsis sieboldii, Blyth, Journ. As. Soc. Beng. xxviii. p. 297. Feranoides jamneetica, Carlleyle, Journ. As. Soc. Beng. xxxviii. p. 196, figs. 3 & 4. This specimen was caught in the Jumna at Agra, and it is identical in every particular with another specimen before me from Pegu. Both have twenty-nine rows of scales, as originally described by Schlegel*, and afterwards by Dumeril and Bibron. Dr. Giinther, however, restricts the number of scales to 27; ventrals 155, caudals 52. Pupil vertical ; rostral five-sided, broader than high; anterior frontals small, transversely triangular, half as large as posterior; vertical nearly as long as* occipitals, longer than broad, with the lateral margins slightly concave (in both specimens), and a right angle behind ; occipitals obliquely truncated or slightly rounded behind ; loreal rather quadrangular, lying in the sutures of the first two or three upper labials, nearly as large as first temporal and almost touching anterior frontals (in contact on one side in Pegu specimen). Praeocular narrow, high, resting on suture of third and fourth upper labials, and reaching the upper surface of the head ; two postoculars, the lowest the larger, lying on sutures of fourth and fifth and fifth * Essai s. 1. phys. Serp. tome i. p. 172. \ |
