Inhabits Western Australia.

So much smaller than G. muricata that I might have considered them as young animals if one of them had not had the body filled with well-formed eggs; and the tail is much shorter in comparison than even in the young of that species.

They agree in most points with the description given by Messieurs Dumeril and Bibron, but not in the colour and in the size of the tail.  The specimens in our collection greatly differ in their colour, but are all very different from any other species.

59.  Grammatophora cristata.  Nape with a crest of distinct, rather short, curved, compressed, spinose scales; back and tail with a series of compressed keeled scales, forming a slight keel; occiput with separate short strong conical spines:  sides of the neck and back with folds crowned with series of short compressed scales; base of the tail with some scattered larger scales.  In spirits, dull olive; crown black with large white spots, beneath black; middle of the belly, and undersides of the base of the tail white; tail with black rings at the end; feet whitish.

Inhabits Western Australia.  Mr. J. Gould.

The underside is coloured somewhat like G. maculatus (G. gaimardii, Dumeril and Bibron) but the sides of the head near the ears are spinose, and the nape is distinctly crested.

But as Dumeril and Bibron’s species is only described from a single specimen which is in a bad state, and has lost its epidermis, and as the description itself, though long, refers chiefly to parts which do not differ in the species of the genus, this species may prove not to be different from it.

These authors, in giving the character of Grammatophora gaimardii and G. decresii, appears to place great reliance on the one having tubular and the other non-tubular femoral pores, which is a fact entirely dependent on the state in which the animal might be at the time when it was put into the spirits, as I have verified by comparing numerous specimens of different reptiles furnished with these pores.

But in this genus the size of the pores is apparently of less importance than in many others, for they appear to be quite invisible in some states of the animal:  thus out of many specimens of G. muricata brought by Mr. Gould from Van Diemen’s Land and Western Australia, eight specimens have no visible pores; these specimens differ from the others in being of a rather paler colour beneath.  This state of the pores may entirely depend on the manner in which they were preserved, for all these specimens had a slit made into their abdomen to admit the spirits; while in all the specimens in which this care had not been taken the pores are distinctly seen, sometimes moderately sized, and at others tubularly produced.

60.  MOLOCH, Gray.

Body depressed, covered with irregular, unequal, small, granular plates, each furnished with a more or less prominent central spine, and with a series of large, conical, convex, acute spines; head and limbs covered with similar scales and spines; head small, with very large spines over each of the eyebrows; tail with irregular rings of large acute spines; femoral and subanal pores none; teeth small, subequal; toes 5.5, short, covered above and below with keeled scales; claws long, acute.