Notes on Maticora bivirgata (Boie) and on Bungarus flaviceps Reinh.

Loveridge (1944) published a key to the species and subspecies belonging to the genus Maticora Gray. This author emphasized that a much larger material than he had at his disposal should be examined, and that all records from literature should be studied, if a clear picture of the subspecies and their ranges was to be obtained. This led me to study the forms of Maticora occurring in the Netherlands East Indies. In the present paper the subspecies of Maticora bivirgata (Boie) are discussed, and some notes on Bungarus flaviceps are given, as specimens of the latter species have been referred to Maticora by several authors. The material examined by me consists of 110 specimens from the collections of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, Leiden (67 specimens), from the Zoologisch Museum, Amsterdam (24 specimens), and from the Zoologisch Museum, Buitenzorg (19 specimens). Moreover I examined one specimen belonging to the Raffles Museum, Singapore. Mr. A. Loveridge kindly sent me data on 7 specimens in the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, Cambridge (Mass.). Thus data on 118 specimens have been included in the present paper. Although I tried to trace all references to Maticora bivirgata in literature, the synonymies are certainly not complete. Many of the references are incorporated in the synonymies of the subspecies only on the base of the localities recorded. In most cases, records in literature do not mention data on the lepidosis, coloration, and sex of the specimens, and this greatly reduces their value for studies as at present undertaken. H. Boie (in F. Boie, 1827, p. 556) described Elaps bivirgatus from Java, Cantor (1839, p. 33) described Elaps flaviceps from Malacca, and Bleeker