220 THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 



TAGE County: Kent (KSU — 7 specs.); Ravenna CDexter, 1948). Summit Counts': 

 Ira (OSM 13.1-2, 84-5, 214, 265). Trumbull County: Vemcn Twp. (TMS 444). 



The grass snakes from Carroll and Jefferson counties are the first from 

 south of the glacial boundary. Buchanan, the collector, states that he found 

 them in open, grassy situations such as orchards and pasture fields. He also 

 says that smooth green snakes are not at all rare in the vicinity of Amster- 

 dam; his students bring two to five of them to the Amsterdam High School 

 each year. This serpent is widely distributed in western Pennsylvania, and 

 the Carnegie Museum has a specimen from Ohio County, West Virginia. 

 Hence, it is not particularly surprising to find it in this part of unglaciated 

 Ohio. 



The increment of new records indicates that vcrnalis must be common in 

 many localities in the northeastern part of the state. Dexter (1944 and 1948) 

 found it to be abundant near Kent, Portage County. One of his specimens 

 was taken along the bank of the Cuyahoga River. Several were collected on 

 the campus of Kent State University, including three that were found in hiber- 

 nation on December 5, 1945, while workmen were moving a pile of cinders. 

 One of these was a juvenile measuring just 6 inches in length, the smallest 

 recorded from Ohio. A female, found on the campus on July 22, 1947, laid 

 si.x eggs over a period of two days and another egg was found in the specimen 

 after it was preserved; this snake measured 467 mm. (slightly under I8I/2 in.) 

 in length when I examined it in 1949. 



Scale counts upon twenty-seven grass snakes (including those reported 

 upon in 1938) are now at hand from northeastern Ohio. Among these the 

 ventral counts are: 120 to 128, mean 124.0, in seventeen males; and 127 to 

 137, mean 132.6 in ten females. Thus, all fall below the maximum counts for 

 vemalis (see above). 



Opheodrys vernalis blanchardi Grobman 

 Western Grass Snake 



(Map 47) 



This subspecies, described by Grobman in 1941, is a plains and prairie 

 form in which the ventral counts are 131 or more in males and 140 or more 

 in females. It ranges from western Ohio to north central Utah; northward it 

 extends through southwestern Minnesota and the Dakotas into extreme south- 

 ern Manitoba; in the West it occurs in many parts of Colorado and south- 

 ward through New Mexico almost to the Mexican border. After carefully 

 sifting all the records, Grobman was unable to find proof that the grass snake 

 is indigenous to Montana, Texas, Oklahoma, or Arkansas. Hence, proper 

 adjustment should be made to eliminate these states from the general range 

 map on page 48. Many specimens of Opheodrys aestivus have been reported 

 in the literature as O. vernalis. The southern limit of the range of blanchardi, 

 from Ohio to eastern Kansas, apparently coincides with the southe"nmost limit 

 of Pleistocene glaciation. 



Onlv a very few snakes of this form have been found in Ohio. Specimens 

 that definitely may be assigned to this race are from the following localities: 



