L. Forró - É. Murai szerk.: Miscellanea Zoologica Hungarica 5. 1989 (Budapest, 1989)
Csorba, G.; Demeter, A.: Zoological collectings by the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Korea. 90. A report on the collecting of the Tenth Expedition
Book review GOLAY, Philippe (1985): Checklist and Keys to the Terrestrial Proteroglyphs of the World. - I-IX + 90 pp, 4 figs. Elapsoidea, Geneva, Switzerland. This relatively small, pocket-like book ventures to include all the terrestrial frontfanged venomous snakes of the world into a system of one enormous multiple identification key. Proteroglyph snakes, having a fang with an enclosed venom canal on the short maxilla in front in their mouth, consist of two large families : Elapidae with cobras, kraits, mambas, etc., and the sea-snakes, Hydrophiidae. A question arises immediately here concerning the systematic opinion of the author: according to his account"on page 1 the majority of the proteroglyph genera (30) belongs to Hydrophiidae, as a subfamily Oxyuraninae. It is a little bit strange to understand the situation, that the most terrestrial proteroglyphs (94 species^, as it is mentioned already in the title of the book, are enumerated as members of the sea-snake family. A detailed analysis of this problem by the author is extremely missing from the book. Though the aim of it was different, i.e. a simple and quick aid for field identification, a serious justification of such an unusual classification would have doubtlessly been worthwhile, at least on the reference level. More than a half of the book is given by a three-level (genus, species, subspecies), well-built, easy-to-handle system of identification keys. Characters being used are exclusively external, morphological, and even easy to observe in the field. Keys are short, clear and definitely expedient. The sometimes difficult and special herpetological terms are avoided by the author, and the inevitable morphological characters are explained in four figures at the beginning of the book. At the end of the keys the taxa are listed according to checklist standard, with author and year of the original description, type locality and known geographical distribution. A complete bibliography takes up 20 pages in the second half of the book, • which is-very useful and important for readers with taxonomical interest. The index at the end of the book serves well for quick localization of every taxa. In sum, the aim of the author to produce a simple field identification book of the terrestrial proteroglyph venomous snakes for non-professional herpet'ologists has been, with some systematical question-marks, reached. A pictorial field guide could, of course, be of a better use. Zoltán KORSÓS Hungarian Natural History Museum
