Contributions to Indo-Australian Herpetology

A complete account of all the reptiles then known to occur in the Indo-Australian Archipelago was published by De Rooij in 1915 and 1917. Since this time several new species have been described, while others have been suppressed or revived. Also the problem of geographical variation begins to penetrate in herpetology more and more. While studying the herpetological collections of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, Leiden and the Zoological Museum, Amsterdam, it became clear to me that, though De Rooij's books offer a sound basis for further studies on the reptiles of the Indo-Australian Archipelago, a great deal of revisional work must still be done before our knowledge of the herpetological fauna of that region will be fairly complete. As I can devote only a rather small part of my time to this revisional work, I am not yet able to publish a complete revision of whole families or genera, but in the present paper I have brought together revisional notes on a number of species, as well as notes on distribution. Through the kindness of Dr. L. Stejneger and Miss D. M. Cochran, United States National Museum, Washington, I was supplied with a list of the reptilesl) collected by Dr. Abbott and Dr. Boden Kloss on the islands west of Sumatra. As the fauna of this part of the Archipelago is still very insufficiently known, I have included notes on this collection, part of which I received for personal examination. I wish to express my thanks to Dr. Stejneger and Miss Cochran for their permission to make use of the unpublished locality-records in their list. My heartiest thanks are due to the following persons for the specimens sent to me for personal examination and for the valuable information