86 COLUBERVERNALIS. 



smooth scales, and with plates below. The tail is long, thick at its root, but 

 soon becomes slender. 



Colour. The head above is beautiful grass-green; the jaws are yellowish- 

 white, tinged with green. The body and tail above are coloured like the head; 

 the belly is yellowish-white. 



Dimensions. Length of head, 7 lines; length of body to vent, 12 inches; length 

 of tail beyond the vent, 7 inches; total length, 19 inches 7 lines. They some- 

 times reach a greater size. In the specimen here described there were 128 

 abdominal plates and 89 subcaudal scales. 



Habits. This is a very gentle animal, and can be handled with impunity; it 

 seeks meadows of high grass, where crickets and grass-hoppers abound, on which 

 it feeds, and is mostly found on the ground; though I have at times seen it 

 stretched on the branches of low shrubs, as the dwarf willow, &:c. 



Geographical Distribution. The Coluber vernalis seems peculiarly a northern 

 animal; it is first seen in Maine; it is abundant in Massachusetts, Connecticut, 

 New York and Pennsylvania; but I have never yet heard of its existence as far 

 south as Virginia. 



a* 



General Remarks. This serpent, from its similarity of colour, seems to 

 have been confounded with the Coluber JEStivus by herpetologists, until Dr. Dekay 

 observed that its scales were smooth, — that it was a smaller animal, — that the 

 proportion of its different parts were not the same, — and that it was entirely a 

 northern animal; and applied to it the specific name of vernalis. 



