plates, and narrowing the inguinal end of the visceral section of the shell. Skull
with the jugal and quadrato-jugal hones strongly developed; a broad and long
alveolar plate to the upper jaw, with one or more ridges, and with its outer margin
denticulated; posterior nares somewhat constricted and deep; palate narrow, concave
; palatine foramina minute; pterygoid region not broad, constricted at the
middle, nearly flat. Membrane bones in the eye. Eeet with five toes anteriorly and
posteriorly, only four in the hind foot appearing externally beyond the skin; claws
4-4 or 5-4. Toes broadly webbed. One or two sigmoid flexures to the large intestine.
Cloaca! bladders. Two processes of the lung free in the visceral cavity. Eggs
oval. Males generally smaller than females, and with the caudal vertebrae elongated.
Batagttr, trtyittata. Bum. & Bib. Plates LXII & LXIII.
• Emys trivittata, D. & B., Erp^t. G£nl., vol. ii, 1885, p. 851 ; Cantor, Journ. As. Soc., Bengal, vol.
xv, 1847, p. 610 ; Dum^ril, Cat. Method, des Kept., 1851, p. 14; Gray, Cat. Tort., Sec., B.M.,
1844, p. 17.
Batagur trivittata, Theobald, Journ. Linn. Soc., vol. x, 1858, p. 14 (S only); id., Journ. As. Soc.,
ex. No., vol. xxxviii, p. 18, 1868 (8 only).
Batagur dhongoJca, Blyth, Journ. As. Soc., Bengal, vol. xxxii, p. 84, 1863, pars.
Clemmys dhongoka, Strauch, Vertheil. Schildkr., p. 88, 1865,pars.
Kachuga peguensis, Gray, Proc. Zool. Soc., 1869, p. 201, fig. 12 (skull); id., Suppl. Cat. Shd. Rept.,
1870, p. 55, fig. 20 / Theobald, Proc. Zool. Soc., 1870, p. 676.
Kachuga trilineata, Gray, Append. Cat. Sh. Rept., p. 18, 1873, pars.
. Batagur trivittata, Theobald, Descr. Cat. Rept., B. Ind., 1876, p. 21 ( <•> only) .
I have personally examined the types of E. trivittata in the Paris Museum,
which are stated to have been obtained by Beynaud, who was the Surgeon attached
to the Expedition of the Chevrette to the East Indies. The males which I have here
described, and of which I procured three from the Irawady and one from Bham6,
agree exactly with the types in the Paris Museum, so that there can be no doubt
of the specific identity of these males with E. trivittata. There is a difliculty,
however, regarding the supposed females.
Br. Gray1 described a species of fresh-water tortoise from a skull said to have
been procured in India, and assigned to it the name of Kachuga trilineata,
Theobald, which was evidently a misprint for trivittata, the name under which
Theobald4 had described the male and female of this species. On the same occasion
Br. Gray described another skull to which the habitat of India was assigned, under
the inappropriate name of K peguensis, if India were the proper habitat of the
animal.
In 1870, Mr. Theobald* pointed out that he had never described a'freshwater
tortoise under the name of JB. trilineata, and had never taken to England
the skull of a three-streaked Batagur from India, although he had taken to London
1 Proc. ZooL Soc., Lond., 1869, p. 200.
* Journ. Linn. Soc., vol. x, 1868, p. 14.
* Proc. Zool. Soc., 1870, p. 676.
skulls of such a species from Pegu, and he again correctly identified the three-
streaked Burmese Batagur with B. trivittata, and directed attention to the skull
of what he believed to be an adult female collected by himself in Pegu and which
was at that time in the British Museum. Mr. Theobald also stated that this female
skull was very different from the skull of the male, which was a smalls and more
finely coloured animal, and that he considered it probable that the skull of the
female was the skull on which Br. Gray had established the species B. trilineata*
He was further under the impression that the K. peguensis of Gray had been
founded on a skull (possibly aberrant) of either Tetraonyx lessoni or B. trivittata}
In 1870 Br. Gray2 accepted Mr. Theobald’s term B. trivittata as the equivalent
of his K. trilineata, which he at that time acknowledged as his own, but he did
not recognize the identity of the three-streaked Batagur of the Irawady with the
Bmys. trivittata of Buméril and Bibron, and described it under a term which had
first been erroneously applied by himself under the impression that the term had
originated with another naturalist.8
In the Supplement in which the Irawady ^three-streaked Batagur appears as K,
trilineata, Br. Gray gave as the habitats of the species, Nepal and Pegu, anrj mentioned
that the Nepal specimen was the 'one figured originally under the name
of Emys lineata, but which is undoubtedly B. lineata or K. lineata of page 56 of
the same Supplement. Moreover, under AT. fusca at page 56, a female from Nepal
is mentioned, presented by Hodgson, and undoubtedly an example of K. Uneatai
as I have satisfied myself by actual examination of the specimen ; the other specimen
of K. fusca having been obtained from Theobald, and, being a female, was
doubtless regarded by him as the female of B. trivittata. Br. Gray, in describe
ing K. trilineata, adopted Theobald’s conclusions regarding the differences that
subsist between the sexes, and he stated that on re-examination he was inclined
to regard the differences- between the skulls as merely sexual, or individual. Br.
Gray, however,, did not go so far as to include the term K. peguensis as a
synonym of K. trilineata, and in speaking of the skull of B. peguensis he said
that it might prove to be the skull of one of the species described in his Cata-r
logue, thus conveying thè impression that he did not regard the evidence of the
specific identity of the’skulls as conclusive. A comparison of the figures of the two
skulls reproduced by Br. Gray in his Supplement is sufficient to convince any
one familiar with the variations that may occur in skulls, that the two forms are
very closely allied, whatever explanation may be offered of the slight observable
differences occurring between them. In the Appendix to the Catalogue of Shield
Reptiles, Br. Gray correctly pointed out that Theobald was in error in suggesting
that K. peguensis was possibly founded on a skull, probably aberrant, of Tetraonyx,
as the skull of B. baska is at once distinguished from the skulls of all known
1 Theobald, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1870, p. 676.
3 Suppl. Cat. Shd. Rept., 1870, p. 54. ,
5 1 state these facts, as they are absolutely neóessary to a clear understanding of the specific terms which have been
applied to this form.