538 COPEIA, 2002, NO. 2

But brother; the snake, the Macajuel,the laziest isn’t he

He can swallow you in the forest quite easily.

THE SNAKES OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO.Hans E. A. Boos. 2001. Texas A&M UniversityPress, College Station, Texas. ISBN 1-58544-1167-3. 270 p. $47.95 (cloth).—The poem quot-ed above (the macajuel is a Boa constrictor) isfrom Boos’ book and it exemplifies the greatcharm of the volume. Sure, the book has therequisite color plates and black and whites (48and 50, respectively) and species descriptions ofall the taxa, but the uniqueness comes in thefolklore found throughout. There are stories inthe introduction, species accounts, and in the

last chapter on snakebite. The folklore onsnakes in Trinidad and Tobago is rich, and Boosdoes a great job of making it an excellent read.This is the first of three books on the Trinidadand Tobago herpetofauna. The other volumeswill cover lizards, amphisbaenians, and croco-dilians, and amphibians. If these other two areas rich in folklore then this could be a successfulseries.

It seems that one of the goals common tobooks on snakes is to somehow remove or atleast reduce the evil stigma associated with theseorganisms, and from this new understandingderive hope that indiscriminate killing of snakeswill cease. This book is no different in that re-gard. As Boos puts it, ‘‘In an emerging genera-tion with attention focused on the televisionscreen and the Internet, residual superstitiousfears may be allayed; it is on this new generationthat survival of our natural world and its inhab-itants will depend. Snakes, demystified and de-mythified, become fascinating, unique creaturesworthy of a closer look, and this may be theirsalvation.’’ The demystification is clearly aimedat island locals, hence the folklore, but the goalis globally appropriate.

Beyond the lore, the book recounts the his-tory of herpetology on the two islands in theintroduction, and species accounts fill most ofthe remainder of the book. The snake assem-blage on Trinidad and Tobago is South Ameri-can (not Antillean) with a couple of endemicspecies. The accounts vary somewhat in con-tent, but in general there are lists of specimens(examined?), description, range, and localnames. Some of the local names are quitecatchy. My favorite name is ‘‘ground puppy’’ forLeptotyphlops albifrons, but close competitors are‘‘silent death of the black night’’ for Lachesismuta and ‘‘jumbo jocko’’ for Boa constrictor. Theaccounts also contain natural history, taxonom-ic notes, and folklore. At the start of each familysection there are head scale drawings of variedquality, with only the colubrid head accompa-nied by a key to the scale names.

There are no synonymies, except for a pecu-liar one for Erythrolamprus bizona. In the synon-ymy and in the taxonomic history, it seems theauthor was unaware of a key paper on the spe-cies by Dunn and Bailey (1939). In a commenton what species a specimen of Erythrolamprusmight be, Boos wrote, ‘‘In 1957, E. bizona mayhave been an unlikely candidate, as it had beendescribed only in a very old paper by Jan(1863), as a variety of E. aesculapii.’’ The ac-counts do not include locality maps, but insteadlocalities refer back to a single map. Althoughthese may be small criticisms from a systematist,

539BOOK REVIEWS

they in no way detract from the goals of thebook. The book in general is well written, clean,and accessible to the lay herpetologist.

The last chapter on snakebite (Snakebite: An-tidotes and Anecdotes) is marvelous. I am notgoing to spoil the contents by repeating any an-tidotes or anecdotes here. Some readers maylaugh at such wild antidote lore, but such storiesabound everywhere there are snakes. For ex-ample, in the great state of Louisiana an oldCajun treatment for a cottonmouth bite is todrink swamp water. As noted above, perhaps themain goal of this book is education, especiallyof Trinidad and Tobago locals. The book doesthis well, but the volume is worthwhile for her-petologists anywhere.

LITERATURE CITED

DUNN, E. R., AND J. R. BAILEY. 1939. Snakes from theuplands of the Canal Zone and of Darien. Bull.Mus. Comp. Zool. 86:1–22.

BRIAN I. CROTHER, Department of Biology, South-eastern Louisiana University, Hammond, Louisi-ana 70402; E-mail: bcrother@selu.edu.