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Show 1895.] BATRACHIANS FROM ADEN* 649 The accompanying table (p. 648) gives the relations of some of the more important head-shields and other details connected with the external features of the species. The number of scales round the body varies from 30 to 34. The smallest number is in the Abyssinian specimen in the British Museum, but whether it is distinctive of the Abyssinian individuals generally is not known, as Wiegmann did not record the number of scales round tbe body. Mr. Matschie's highest number is 34, but Colonel Yerbury's only reach 32. The females are olive-brown or olive-grey, wdth a varying number (generally 6, occasionally 5) of dark brown longitudinal lines marked at regular intervals with enlarged dark brown spots, each generally having a white spot associated with it. Some of these lines are prolonged on to the tail. The intervals between two lines generally contain two scales, rarely three. The shields of the head are margined with dark brown, and there are some obscure dusky lines on the throat. The underparts are white. Tbe males are generally brown above, with obscure indications of darker brown bands, sometimes entirely absent, and each scale is margined with brown. The back is frequently white-spotted and also the sides of the head and neck, but these spots are variable, and in some they are all but absent. There is generally a dark black band behind the eye passing over the ear and becoming dusky along the sides. In some the top of the head is reddish brow-n, the sides of the head from behind the ear forwards to the snout, and invading the lower labial margin, bright brick-red spotted with white. In others these parts are all inky black, including the chin and throat, but white-spotted. In some black and white prevail on the sides of the head. This lizard is viviparous. The female from Shaikh Othman was gravid with five foetuses, the measurements of three of which are given in tbe table. " The greater number of these lizards were caught in the traps set for rats and other small mammals in fields, gardens, and elsewhere, but a few were dug out of the ground. They seem to be vegetable feeders, the great attraction as a bait being an onion." With reference to the food of this species, I have opened the stomachs of a number of them and have found the contents to be chiefly the remains of insects. The little vegetable matter that occurred in their stomachs was in all likelihood swallowed by tbe lizard in seizing its insect prey, just as Chalcides sepoides swallows quantities of sand. 13. MABUIA TESSELLATA, n. sp. (Plate XXXVI. fig. 2.) 1 adult 2. Head moderately long, snout obtusely rounded. Nostril behind the suture of the rostral and first labial, pierced in the hinder part of a small nasal; a small postnasal resting wholly on the first labial. Supranasals linear, in contact behind the rostral. Frontonasal considerably broader than long. Praefrontals form a narrow suture |