IDENTITY OF HALLOWELL'S SNAKE GENERA MEGA-LOPS AND AEPIDEA
By Leonhard Stejneger,Head Curator of Biology, United States National Museum
It has long been realized that Hallowell's paper "Report upon theReptilia of the North Pacific Exploring Expedition, under com-mand of Capt. John Rogers, U. S. N.", edited after the author'sdeath by E. D. Cope, and published in the Proceedings of theAcademy of Sciences, Philadelphia, 1860, (pp. 480-510) containedmany errors both as to identifications, descriptions, and localities.Many of these have been cleared up from time to time, but someof them have remained a mystery to the present time. One of thedifficulties has been that the specimens were not originally properlyrecorded and labeled. The collections made by the expedition weretaken to Philadelphia to be worked up, as there was nobody thenin Washington who knew anything about exotic reptiles and am-phibians, Hallowell being the only man in the United States whoup to then had any experience in that line, except Girard whoseconnection with the Smithsonian Institution ceased about that time.Later the specimens were returned to the LTnited States NationalMuseum and added to a vast accumulation of uncataloguecl herpeto-logical material. In 18G9 Prof. S. F. Baird, overwhelmed thoughhe was by other work, began to catalogue part of these collections,giving them numbers in the record book and on the paper labels,but without taking time to identify the species, and often not evenindicating whether the specimen was a snake, lizard, or frog, in mostcases only noting the locality and name of collector in very generalterms, trusting to the original labels when filling in the details later.By 1881 many of the old paper labels had deteriorated to such anextent as to be illegible and the decision was made to attach a tintag with the stamped catalogue number to each specimen. Un-fortunately, by this time Professor Baird had given up direct con-nection w4th the reptile collection, and the clerk to whom this workNo. 2643.?Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 69, Art. 16.2997?26 1
2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL. MUSEUM vol. 69to a great extent was delegated did not know anything about rep-tiles, their names, the literature involved, or the geography of thecountries inhabited by them. He was also very often mistaken inhis deciphering the old numbers, either carelessly written originallyor blurred with age, so that this retagging of the collection resultedin an orgy of errors, some of which I have been able to discover,though the majority will probably remain incorrigible. At the con-clusion of this retagging there remained hundreds of specimens,with or without data, which were recatalogued under new numbers,the old numbers being "obliterated."Quite a few specimens of the collections brought home by theRogers North Pacific Exploration Expedition suffered a similar fate.In my " Herpetology of Japan " (Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus., No. 68, 1907)I had occasion to call attention to some of them (for instance onpages 23, 96, 124, 148, 157, 175, 191, 196, 205, 239, 260, 328, 334, 340,367, 412, 475), and others have been discovered since (thus the co-types of Lygosaurus pellopleurus Hallowell,^ missing in 1907, havebeen found and reentered as Nos. 42110 and 42114).One of the most perplexing mysteries of this kind has been theMegaloys maculatus Hallowell,- alleged to have been collected inTahiti by Mr. Adams. The description of the somewhat defectivespecimen was too insufficient to identify it with any known species,and as no land snake has been found in Tahiti by any other collector,the status of this species and the genus founded upon it has re-mained unsolved. Matters were made still worse when Cope, in 1895,in dissecting the specimen from Hongkong, Cat. No. 7339, U.S.N.M.,which Hallowell had doubtfully referred to Homalopsis huccatus,erroneously assumed that he had before him Hallowell's Megalopsmaculatus. Cope redefined it as a separate genus and gave it thename Anoplophallus maculatus., because Megalops was preoccupied.As I have shown elsewhere,^ the specimen thus erroneously identifiedby two eminent herpetologists is that of a very common East Indiansnake, Lycodon subcinctus. The true type not having turned up yet,I had to conclude, less than a year ago : " What Hallowell's Megalopsmaculatus from Tahiti really represents is still a mystery."^In glancing over a shelf of old unidentified material a few daysago, my eye caught the word " Tahiti " on the faded paper labelof a snake. It was at once confronted with Hallowell's originaldescription of Megalops maculatiis., with which it Avas found toagree in every detail. Here, then, was the type. Cat. No. 7367,
1 Proceedings Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, 1860, p. 496.
=> Idem, p. 488.sproc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vol. 66, art. 25, 1925, pp. 90-91.
ART. 16 SNAKE GENERA MEGALOPS AND AEPIDEA STEJNEGER 6U.S.N.M. In the record book the original entry under that numberhas only the following
:
Number: 7367.Locality: Tahiti.Collected by: Mr. Adams.Number of specimens : 1.An examination of the specimen, mutilated exactly as describedby Hallowell, shows it to be a Lepfodeh'a of the annulata group,the scale formula agreeing with the form described as L. aTbofuscain Boulenger's Catalogue of Snakes in the British Museum (vol. 3,1896, p. 95), of which Meyalops maculatus Hallowell consequentlyis a synonym. The range of the species extends from Mexico in thenorth to Paraguay in the south. The only place where the Rogersexpedition could have obtained it is Nicaragua, where extensivecollections were made.On the same page (p. 488) as Megalops maculatus Hallowelldescribed a new genus and species of snakes as Aepidea 7'ohusta withthe habitat Caspar Straits. This name has also remained more orless an enigma, since the type specimen has not been forthcominguntil it was recognized in connection with the above investigationand shown to be a specimen (No. 7324) which has been on the shelvesfor many years under the name of Gonyosoma oxycephaluin withthe more than dubious locality " Japan " and collector " PerryExped.," derived from the original record under that number. Acareful comparison of this specimen with Hallowell's elaborate de-scription of Aepidea rohusta^ with which it agrees in the minutestdetails, shows that Boulenger's conclusion as to its identity wascorrect and that the specimen is in reality Hallowell's type. Anexamination of the original record book shows, furthermore, that thecorrect number of this specimen should be Cat. No. 7508, U.S.N.M.,with the " locality " Caspar Straits and " collected by " Capt.Rodgers (sic!). The transposition of the numbers was undoubt-edly made at the time of the tin-tagging described above, and thecorrect number has now been restored to the specimen. The " CasparStraits " is the strait between Banka and Billiton Islands in theMalay Archipelago, throughout which the species is common. Thespecies has been reported since from Banka but not as yet fromBilliton. o