BARBOUR AND NOBLE: LIZARDS OF THE GENUS AMEIVA. 473 



Remarks: — The description was made of an adult male that 

 measm-ed one hundred and thirty-one millimeters from snout to 

 vent. 



Habitat: — Only known from near the city of Panama where it is 

 found with Ameiva a. praesignis in the savannah of Panama. 



Ameiva festiva (Lichtenstein). 



Description: — Adult male; M. C. Z. 2723. Turbo, Isthmus of 

 Darien; 1871; G. A. Maack. 



Related to Ameiva ruthveni from which it may be distinguished by 

 the following characters : — frontonasal separated from the loreal by 

 the posterior nasal; last supraocular separated from the outer occi- 

 pitals by four or five rows of granules; no distinct band of enlarged 

 gulars extending across the throat but all diminishing in size from the 

 centre where there is a group of six or eight very large scales, one being 

 four or five times larger than any of the other scales; preanal plates 

 in a triangular group of three large rotund plates, anterior largest; 

 postbrachials in a single row of very large scales; nineteen and twenty 

 femoral pores; tibial shields in only two rows of very large plates, 

 those of the outer largest; upper side of the wrist covered with six 

 or eight subequal scales; the whorls of caudal scales not raised later- 

 ally so strongly as those of Ameiva ruthveni. 



Coloration: — Although somewhat faded, the coloration seems to 

 be distinctly different from that of A. ruthveni; dorsal surface olive- 

 brown, two irregular black bands running the length of the flanks, the 

 lower border of these bands strongly notched; a narrow somewhat 

 broken band of olive-gray running down the middle of each of these 

 bands; ventral surface blue-gray tinged with yellowish; two or three 

 longitudinal series of dark brown spots on the ^•entrals; the outer 

 spots very irregular and attenuated ; shields of the under side of thighs 

 bordered partly or wholly with dark blue-gray. 



Variation: — The series of eight adult males from several localities 

 show a considerable degree of variation in coloration. One specimen, 

 M. C. Z. 9581 (from Honduras, collected in 1907 by E. C. Post) has a 

 very wide stripe of olive down the middle of the back, making the 

 lateral bands proportionally narrower than those of the specimen 

 described. In another specimen M. C. Z. 9568 from Nicaragua the 

 same general pattern as the typical one is present but the tonality is 

 much darker, the ground color being a very dark olive-blue. The dark 

 lateral stripes are not at all olivaceous. There are two, instead of 

 one, bright bluish gray stripes on each side. 



