14 PSAMMOPHIS FLAGELLIFORMIS. 



confounded with the Chicken Snake, the Black Snake, the Green Snake, and by 

 some herpetologists has been overlooked altogether. 



Linnaeus describes a Coluber filiformis,* which some naturalists have considered 

 as our Coach-whip Snake, but it agrees with it neither in colour, the number 

 of its plates, nor in its geographical distribution. 



Laurenti next gave a Natrix flagelliformis;t this cannot be the Coach-whip 

 Snake, for he refers to tab. 47 of Catesby, which is the Bluish-green Snake, 

 (Dryinus mycterizans,) and is not an inhabitant of the United States. 



Daudin, under his Coluber flagelliformis,J adds still more to the confusion; for 

 he refers to the mycterizans, and to tab. 57 of Catesby, which is the Green 

 Snake, that he says is "called by the Anglo-Americans Coach-whip Snake;" — his 

 description, then, of the Coach-whip is taken from the Green Snake ! During all 

 this time the plate and description of Catesby were overlooked, till Shaw called 

 the attention of naturalists to them in his General Zoology. 



Merrem§ gives a Coluber flagelliformis, but refers to the filiformis of Linnseus 

 and the Natrix filiformis of Laurenti as synonymes; here we find a second 

 reference to Catesby's animal, but it is given doubtingly. 



Even that excellent ophidiologist Schlegel has fallen into a similar error with 

 respect to the common name flagelliformis, by supposing it applicable to the animal 

 represented in Catesby's 47th table,|| which is the Bluish-green Snake, and he 

 applies to the Coach-whip Snake of Catesby what he (Catesby) says of the Bluish- 

 green Snake: — "Ce voyageur dit que le Coach-whip Snake est aussi agile qu'inno- 

 cent, qu'il habite les arbres et qu'il vit d'insectes," &c. 



* Syst. Nat., vol. i. p. 383. t Synop. Kept, p. 79. 



J Hist. Nat. des Rept., vol. vi. p. 380. § Versuch eines Syst. der Amphib., p. 116. 



II Dryophis Catesbyi, Schlegel, Ph3^s. des Serp., torn. ii. p. 253. 



