288 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [March 



a' . — Usually 1 preocular: 



Black with three light stripes; or brown or red with 

 stripes and spots distinct ; no nuchal blotches ; head 



smaller, E. e. elegans. 



Greenish-olive; stripes and spots not very distinct; 

 nuchal blotches often present; ventrals often dark; 



head larger, E. e. vagrans. 



h'. — Usually 2 preoculars; often 23 rows; color hke vagrans 



or darker, E. e. hiscutata. 



b. — Body slender; posterior chin-shields much longer than an- 

 terior; brown, usually without stripes; spots small and 

 irregular, E. hammondi 



B. — Scales in 19 rows; upper labials 7; posterior chin-shields much 

 longer than anterior {E. sirtalis) : 



a. — Body stout; head moderately large: 



Brown or black ; upper row of spots often fused into a stripe ; 

 usually red on sides, E.s.parietalis. 



Usually black, with three light stripes, . . E.s. pickeringi. 

 b. — Body small ; head and eye small ; often 17 rows and 6-8 labials ; 



color variable, E.s. leptocephala. 



Eutaenia elegans. 



Baird and Girard, Catalogue of North American Serpents, p. 34 (1853). 



This species has in nearly every case 8 upper labials and 21 rows of 

 scales, of which the outer is either smooth or very faintly keeled, but 

 an occasional example has 19 rows, or in one form 23, and the labials are 

 sometimes 7. Lateral stripe on the second and third rows. The head 

 is small and delicately formed ; the eye moderately small, and the poste- 

 rior chin-shields are about equal to the anterior ones or very little 

 longer. The throat and chin arc almost invariably yellowish. It is 

 to be observed that two species found together in California, E. elegans 

 and E. sirtalis parietalis, occa.sionally exhibit the scale and labial for- 

 mula of the other, and very rarely the former may have posterior 

 chin-shields as long as the shortest of the latter, and a very similar 

 color variety occurs in each; but when elegans has 19 rows or 7 labials 

 it may almost always be distinguished from any form of E. sirtalis l)y 

 its short hinder chin-shields, and from any but E. s. leptocephala by its 

 small head and eye. 



Three subspecies are to be admitted. 



Eutsenia elegans elegans. 



Eutania elegans B. and G., Cat. No. Am. Serp., p. .34 (18.53). 

 Tropidonotus trivittntus Hallow., Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1853, p. 237. 

 E. elegans lineolata (part) Cope, Proc. U. 8. Nat. Mus., XIV, p. 6.55 (1892). 

 E. infernalis infernalis Cope, /. c, p. 657 (not Coluber injernalis Blain.). 



Baird and Girard's type of E. elegans was almost black in color, with 



