_Reptiles and Amphibia of the Seychelles._--The reptiles and amphibia are rather numerous and very interesting, indicating clearly that the islands can hardly be classed as oceanic. There are seven species of lizards, three being peculiar to the islands, while the others have rather a wide range. The first is a chameleon--defenceless {431} slow-moving lizards, especially abundant in Madagascar, from which no less than eighteen species are now known, about the same number as on the continent of Africa. The Seychelles species (_Chamaeleon tigris_) also occurs at Zanzibar. The next are skinks (Scincidae), small ground-lizards with a wide distribution in the Eastern hemisphere. Two species are however peculiar to the islands--_Mabuia seychellensis_ and _M. wrightii_. The other peculiar species is one of the geckoes (Geckotidae) named _Aeluronyx seychellensis_, and there are also three other geckoes, _Phelsuma madagascarensis_, _Gehyra mutilata_ and _Hemidactylus frenatus_, the two latter having a wide distribution in the tropical regions of both hemispheres. These lizards, clinging as they do to trees and timber, are exceedingly liable to be carried in ships from one country to another, and I am told by Dr. Guenther that some are found almost every year in the London Docks. It is therefore probable, that when species of this family have a very wide range they have been assisted in their migrations by man, though their habit of clinging to trees also renders them likely to be floated with large pieces of timber to considerable distances. Dr. Percival Wright, to whom I am indebted for much information on the productions of the Seychelles Archipelago, informs me that the last-named species varies greatly in colour in the different islands, so that he could always tell from which particular island a specimen had been brought. This is analogous to the curious fact of certain lizards on the small islands in the Mediterranean being always very different in colour from those of the mainland, usually becoming rich blue or black (see _Nature_, Vol. XIX. p. 97); and we thus learn how readily in some cases differences of colour are brought about, either directly or indirectly, by local conditions. Snakes, as is usually the case in small or remote islands, are far less numerous than lizards, only two species being known. One, _Dromicus seychellensis_, is a peculiar species of the family Colubridae, the rest of the genus being found in Madagascar and South America. The other, _Boodon geometricus_, one of the Lycodontidae, or fanged ground-snakes, is also peculiar. So far, then, as the reptiles are {432} concerned, there is nothing but what is easily explicable by what we know of the general means of distribution of these animals.