1903.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 291 



tion in Montana, and two of the Academy's specimens were collected 

 by Dr. Henry Skinner at Sapello, New Mexico, at an altitude of 10,000 

 feet. 



The scutellation is similar to E. e. elegans, but the body is on an 

 average larger and of stouter build. The head is larger and the eye 

 relatively small. 



The color is almost always greenish or light olive, with the pale yel- 

 low stripes narrow, not distinct, and often encroached upon by the 

 small and ill-defined spots. An occasional example is brown, but 

 vagrans, notwithstanding its extensive range, varies less than elegans. 

 Usually there is a pair of dark nuchal blotches and the ventrals are 

 more or less clouded with dark slate. While ordinary specimens are 

 sufficiently distinct from elegans, there are intermediates in the western 

 portion of its range, such as those called E. e. lineolata Cope, which 

 reduce elegans and vagrans to the rank of subspecies. 



No examples of E. e. brunnea Cope are known but the two types 

 collected at Fort Bidwell, Cal. These anomahes might almost as 

 well be regarded as E. e. elegans, but their robust build and the localit}' 

 whence they came incline me to refer them to the present form. 



The type of E. couchi Kenn. came from Pitt river, Cal., three hun- 

 dred miles north of the known limit of E. hammondi, with which it has 

 commonly been associated, and I agree with Van Denburgh in regard- 

 ing the specimen as an anomalous vagrans. 



There does not seem to be any reason to consider Cope's tj'pe of 

 E. &. plutonia, from Walla Walla, Washington, as anything more than a 

 melanistic vagrans. It is to be observed that Yarrow had already 

 given the name of E. henshawi to this specimen, at the same time 

 describing Cope's second example, from western Arizona, as E. vagrans 

 •plutonia. 



Eutaenia elegans biscutata. 



EutcBnia biscutata Cope, Proc. Acad. Nat. Set. Phila., 1883, p. 21. 



In western Oregon and Washington, and especially in the humid 

 northwestern portion of the last state, E. e. vagrans is largely replaced 

 by snakes generally similar but with a decided tendency toward melan- 

 ism, and having usually two or three preoculars and sometimes 

 23 rows of scales. The types of E. biscutata were almost black and 

 came from Klamath Lake, Ore., the most easterly locality from which 

 it has been known, and where the rainfall is heavy. The association 

 of these tendencies with a restricted area of distribution seems to 

 require that it shall be recognized as a subspecies of E. elegans. 



