40 AUSTEALIAN SNAKES. 



uniformly dark (ratlier bluish) grey, and much lighter anteriorly ; in others 

 all the plates are clouded with bluish black, occasionally formed into blotches, 

 and leaving irregular yellowish portions in the middle of each plate. The 

 body scales on back and sides are dark throughout, those only on the anterior 

 half of the body shewing a margin with a black dot at the tip of each scale. 

 The few specimens in the Museum collection present a variation in 

 color, sufficiently great to have warranted the creation of a new species, 

 but after all they are probably the same snakes which Dr. Gray had under 

 consideration when describing D. olivacea. 



The British Museum examples are from North-east Australia and 

 Port Essington ; those in the Australian Museum, from Port Denison. 



Gbet Snake. Diemenia reticulata. 



(Plate XII, fig. 10.) 

 Diemenia reticulata, Gray, Zool. Misc., p. 54. G.ntkr., Cat. of Coluhr. Snakes in Col. 



B. M., p. 212. 

 Elaps psammophis, Sclilegel, Ess. 11, p. 455, and Ahhildg., t. 46, f. 14. 



Scales in 15 rows. 



Two anal plates. 



Abdominals, 177. 



Subcaudals, 85/85. 



Total length, 30 inches. 



Head, ^ inch. 



Tail, 6 inches. 

 The coloration is uniformly grey above and greenish below, the 

 central part of the ventrals being conspicuously marked with green ; tips 

 of scales and skin between them black ; end of tail, salmon-colored, a 

 yellowish dark-edged streak crossing the rostral shield. The eye is 

 encircled first by a black and then by a yellowish line, both ending in a 

 point below the orbit. 



This species occm-s in nearly every part of Australia, the extreme 

 north and south excepted. It has been taken on the Murray and Darling, 

 and specimens have come to hand from Brisbane, Port Curtis, and Eock- 

 hampton. All these snakes differ no more from those of Sydney than 

 they do from each other. Much dependence cannot be placed on coloration 

 as a distinguishing characteristic between snakes. No two of them vary 

 so much from each other as does the same snake before and after shedding 

 its skin. The species under consideration is the most common in New 



