142 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



shelter. Specimen No. 5 of my collection, a very large 

 adult female without wide cheeks and the regular stripes 

 on the back, I captured running up the trunk of a hollow 

 tree. I put it in my vivarium, where, after a few days, I 

 found her under a rock coiled around eight eggs, which 

 she would only leave when disturbed. In due time I 

 found eight nice little blue tails, each about II/4 inches 

 long. A few years later I found at Cliff Cave under a 

 rock another female — a younger specimen — again coiled 

 around eggs. This is the only female lizard that behaves 

 thus, and the question in my mind is whether the body 

 heat of these so-called cold-blooded animals has any influ- 

 ence on the hatching of the eggs, 



42. EuMECES ANTHRACiNus Baird. Coal Skink. 



Plestiodon anthracmus. 



Description. — Head and body depressed, quadrangular; in section 

 rather slender. Tail cylindrical, attenuated, one and one-half times 

 the head and body. Supranasals, internasal, and prefrontal rhomboid; 

 the former small and more transverse than the rest. One prefrenal 

 equal to the supra-nasal, half as long as and higher than the pentag- 

 onal loral, extending upward to contact with the internasal. Upper 

 labials, six or seven. One large transverse pentagonal mental plate in 

 the end of the chin, behind the tip, instead of the two of E. quinque- 

 lineatus. Hind leg applied twice forward reaching about to middle 

 of neck. Scales of body in twenty-four longitudinal rows, smooth. 

 (Cope.) 



Color. — Four narrow yellow lines, two on each side of the broad long- 

 itudinal lateral black band. This band begins at the nostril and passes 

 through the eye to the vent. Tail dark blue above, beneath lighter. 

 Top of legs and feet black, lighter below. Old specimens have the top 

 of the head tinged with red. 



Size. — Head and body to vent 56 mm.; from vent to end of tail 101 

 mm. Total length 1.57 mm. 



Habitat. — The Coal Lizard is reported as abundant in 

 the Alleghany region from Pennsylvania southward. It 

 also occurs in Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri, Missouri 

 localities : Cope in his Crocodiles, Lizards and Snakes 

 of North America reports No, 3123 of the Smithsonian 

 Collection from Laclede County, collected by J, IT, Clark. 



