1913.1 NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 213 



NOTES ON SERPENTS IN THE FAMILY COLUBRID^. 



BY JOSEPH C. THOMPSON, SURGEON, U. S. N. 



It is a curious fact that during the last two decades one of the 

 rarest things in the literature dealing with serpents is a detailed 

 account of an individual specimen. Reference is not made to 

 original descriptions of a type, as the majority of these are full and 

 satisfactory, but anything like the records left by Dumeril and Bibron 

 or by Cope of a particular specimen are now made by few authors. 

 The need for them is a very real one, both to students of zoogeography 

 in their efforts to outline the distribution of allied forms, and to those 

 engaged in the gathering of data relating to the range of variation 

 exhibited by a given species. 

 Trirhinopholis styani Boulenger. 



No. 26,786 Cal. Ac. Sci. Coll. Rev. C. Barlow. Waung Wan 

 Shan, Chekiang Province, China. Male; total length 205, tail 

 29 mm. 



Squamation. — Scales in 15 rows, continuous throughout the body, 

 smooth, without pits, those in the outer series rounded behind and 

 twice as wide as those in the dorsal series, Gastrosteges 118, ' 

 abnormally broad. Anal entire. Urosteges 27 pairs. Nasal 

 divided, entirely surrounding the nostril. Loreal absent. Pre- 

 ocular 1. Postoculars 2. Anterior temporals 2, the lower not in 

 contact with the postoculars; posterior 2. Supralabials 6, the third 

 and fourth entering the eye. Infralabials on the right side 5, the 

 normal fourth and fifth fused and with an incisure from the upper 

 border; on the left side 6, the first pair widely separated bj' the mental 

 which is in contact with the chin-shields. Geneials in two pairs, 

 anterior the larger and touching three labials, the posterior touch the 

 third and fourth. 



Anatomy. — Maxillary with 20 small, equal teeth. Palatine with 

 10 teeth. Pterygoid with 22 teeth, only a trifle smaller than those 

 on the maxillary. Dentary with 20 equal teeth, the posterior third 

 of the bone is free, as in Polyodontophis. Hypophyses present 

 throughout the vertebral column. Eye 2 mm. in diameter and 1 mm. 

 distant from the mouth. Rudimentary lung present. Apex of the 

 heart at the 23d gastrostege, in terms of body vertebrae this is 19.5% 



