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Show 672 MR. W. T. BLANFORD ON PERSIAN REPTILES. [June 7, above the sea; Abadeh, at 6000 feet, is a higher locality than any previously recorded. In the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1879, vol. xlviii. p. 129, I mentioned that Dr. Peters had written to me that the Lizard from Persia and Western India referred by Mr. Blyth, Mr. Theobald, Dr. Anderson, and myself, to the present species is really the Lacerta sanguinolenta of Pallas, and Agama aralensis of Lichtenstein, and that it must be distinguished from the true A. agilis of Olivier, which is a form allied to A. (Trapelus) ruderata. As I had not Olivier's work in Calcutta, I could not go into this question ; but now, after doing so, I am inclined to retain the name of A. agilis for the Persian form. I have again compared the Persian, Baluchistan, and Sind specimens, of which there is now a fine series in the British Museum, with Olivier's original description and figure, and with the more detailed characters given by Dumeril and Bibron (I. c). I have also gone carefully through Pallas's description of Lacerta sanguinolenta^, Eichwald's description and figure of Agama sanguinolenta2, Lichtenstein's description of Agama aralensis*, and, lastly, Riippell's figure and description of Trapelus fiavimaculatus * from Arabia ; and I have examined the specimens in the Paris and Berlin Museums. Besides the series from Persia, Baluchistan, and Sind, mostly collected by myself, there are in the British Museum good adults of a form labelled Agama sanguinolenta from three localities-Syr Darya (the river Jaxartes), Mangyschlak (doubtless the place of that name on the Caspian Sea), and West Goladnaja (I do not know the locality; but it is doubtless Central Asiatic, as the specimen was received from the St.-Petersburg Museum). The specimens from Syr Darya were collected by Severtzoff, and have been labelled Stellio aralensis. There is besides a young individual from Arabia, bearing the name Agama fiavimaculata. There are in the Paris Museum, amongst the specimens referred to Agama agilis, two that were collected by Olivier. I see no reason to doubt that these, which are mentioned in C. Dumeril's Catalogue, are two of the original types. They and some other specimens in the same Museum, brought by Aucher-Eloy from Persia, appear to me (so far as I can judge without absolutely placing the specimens side by side) to be identical with the form I have already referred to Olivier's species. The figure and the brief characters in Olivier's work, and the much fuller description given by Dumeril and Bibron, agree well with the Persian and Sind form, except that in both accounts the ventral scales are said to be smooth. This 1 Zoog. Eos.-As. iii. p. 23. 2 Fauna Oaspio-caucasica, p. 89, pi. xiv. figs. 3, 4. 3 Eversmann's ' Eeise von Orenburg nach Buchara,' p. 144. 4 Neue Wirbelthiere, Amphibien, p. 12, pi. vi. fig. 1. By Dumeril and Bibron this reference is incorrectly given; and Biippell's Atlas, Eeise nordl. Afrika, is quoted instead of the later work. In Gray's ' Catalogue of Lizards' the synonymy for Agama agilis is the same as in Dumeril and Bibron's work ; and as the misquotation is repeated, the references were probably copied without verification. |