General Notes. 99 



NOMENCLATORIAL NOTES ON MILK SNAKES. 



Inferring to the treatment in the Check List of North American Am- 

 phibians and Reptiles, by Stejneger and Barbour, of the North American 

 milksnakes belonging to the genus Lampropellis, especially the group 

 corresponding to Cope's genus Osceola (as distinguished from the original 

 use of this name by Baird and Girard ) which should be known as Sphen- 

 ophis Fitzinger, 1843, I have been asked repeatedly what has become of 

 the old well-known names L. doliata (Linmeus), L. coccinea (Schlegel) 

 and L. annulata Kennicott. In the check list only the following names 

 occur: L. elapsoides (p. 88); L. triangulum triangulum (p. 89); L. tri- 

 angulum amaura; and L. triangulum genlilis (p. 90). 



To begin with L. annulata, Kennicott's paratype, from Brownsville, 

 Texas, upon which this name was based in 1860, I can not now distin- 

 guish specifically from Baird and Girard's Ophibolus gentilis (1853) 

 based upon a specimen collected by Capt. Marcy, June 14, 1852, in a 

 locality on the North Fork of the Red River, near Sweetwater Creek, 

 Wheeler Co., Texas. 



As for Coronella coccinea of Schlegel, 1837, it must first be noted that 

 he describes it as having 17 scale rows, being undoubtedly the same form 

 which Holbrook the following year described as Coluber elapsoides. This 

 would give Schlegel's name the priority, but the name is not original 

 with him, as he quotes Coluber coccineus of Latreille, 1802. This name, 

 however, is antedated by Blumenbach's Coluber coccineus (1788). 

 Latreille's and Blumenbach's name, however, undoubtedly refers to the 

 same species, Schlegel's statement to the contrary notwithstanding. Thus 

 this name which has caused so much confusion fortunately drops out as 

 unavailable. 



Finally, Linnaeus in the twelfth edition of the Systema Naturae, 1766, 

 vol. 1, p. 379, describes a Coluber doliatus from Carolina, collected by 

 Garden, with a scale formula of 164 ventrals and 43 caudals as follows: 

 " Ha 1 fascia? nigra? non perfecte cingunt abdomen, sed lateribus connec- 

 tuntur cum remotiori, unde perfecti annuli dorsales." This is certainly 

 not the form which later has been known as Ophibolus or Lampropeltis 

 doliatus. It is not unlikely, in fact there is great probability, that he 

 had a Cemophora coccinea, but the type has apparently disappeared and 

 the question of its identity may never be established with such certainty 

 as to justify us in substituting the Linn&ean name for Blumenbach's well- 

 known species. — Leonhard Stejneger. 



