SCOTOPHIS. 79 



rather large, triangular, pointed. The exterior row little if any 

 larger than the rest. 



General color of body above light red, paler on the sides. Along 

 the back a series of dorsal blotches, about 45 in number, 32 from 

 head to anus. These blotches anteriorly are longitudinally quad- 

 rate, gradually becoming transverse; in front they are concave be- 

 fore and behind, and with the corners produced longitudinally, 

 exteriorly they are zigzag convex. The color of each blotch is a 

 dark brick-red, with a deep black margin half a scale wide. Ex- 

 terior to the black is a lighter shade of the ground-color. On each 

 side of the dorsal series is a second alternating one of smaller elon- 

 gated blotches, similarly constituted as to color. A third opposite 

 to the dorsal, occurs on the edge of the abdomen, and on the 1st to 

 the 4th row of scales : in this the red is lighter, and the black is con- 

 fined to a few scattered scales. The lateral blotches are more or less 

 indistinct in places, and frequently confluent with each other and the 

 dorsal series. Posteriorly too they are reduced more or less to the 

 black marks in single scales. Color beneath yellowish white, with 

 subquadrangular blotches of black, generally occupying half of the 

 inferior surface of the abdominal scutellae. 



The ground-color of the sides extends up on the forehead in the 

 form of a frontlet, which crosses the vertical at its anterior extremity, 

 passes backwards along the top of the head, including the supercili- 

 aries and outside of occipitals, crosses above the angle of the mouth, 

 and runs into the sides of the neck. This is narrowly margined on 

 both edges with black. A second frontlet across the front of the 

 postfrontals, narrower but similar, and bending down on each side to 

 the anteorbital. A similarly colored blotch on the commissure 

 of the occipitals, widening behind and constituting a centre to the 

 dark red space enclosed by the large frontlet on the back of the neck : 

 behind the one just mentioned is another rather larger, and the two 

 are sometimes confluent. A dark red stripe is included between the 

 two frontlets just described, crossing the posterior part of the post- 

 frontals, the upper end of the anterior frontals, and through the eye, 

 across the angle of the mouth down the sides of the neck. Vertical 

 edges of the upper and lower labials black. 



Charleston, S. C. 214+1. 79. 27. 29 1. 4^. Dr. Barker. 



Specimens from Kemper Co., Miss., much larger in size, agree 

 exactly in the pattern of coloration. The red is, however, more or 



