156 BULLETIN 61^ UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



specimens from the most western (coast) localities. The most usual 

 color is brown with red markings on the scales; stripes greenish, 

 yellowish or red, the lateral on the second and third rows, the dorsal 

 on more or less of the median three. ^ On the coast in California, 

 however, specimens are found that have a light olive ground color, 

 no lateral spots visible on the scales, lateral stripes wanting, and a 

 wide, yellow, dorsal stripe. This lighter color phase thus accompanies 

 the reduced scutellation, a fact which has several times led to the 

 description of such specimens as separate species or subspecies 

 (atrata Kennicott and vidua Cope). They are, it is true, rather 

 unique with their light color and reduced scutellation, so that, ignoring 

 the variations in these characters, they might easily be considered 

 distinct. Brown's hypothesis that such mdividuals represent muta- 

 tions is perhaps excusable on this ground, but with the series before 

 me I can see absolutely no reason for considering them distinct. In 

 the first place, all gradations occur in the same locality between 

 so-called atrata specimens, with no lateral stripes and a uniform 

 ground color of pale olive, and darker specimens with distinct lateral 

 stripes, while in the second place a tendency toward the same coloration 

 is evident along the western coast from Santa Cruz County, .Cali- 

 fornia, to the Olympic Mountains in Washington. Van Denburgh 

 (1897, 209) states that such specimens occur "nowhere else but on 

 the coast slope of the San Francisco peninsula." That this is a 

 mistake is shown by an apparently typical example from as far north 

 as Crescent City, California, in the Field Museum. This specimen 

 is a typical "atrata^' except that the dorsal stripe is red and rather 

 narrower than usual. It is true that no typical "atrata" specimens 

 have been found in Oregon and Washington, but this may be attributed 

 to the fact that the specimens from this general region are, as a rule, 

 very dark, nevertheless the two Mount Olympic specimens in the 

 Field Museum, described by Meek (1899, 235-236) as leptocephalus 

 olympia and ruhristriata, approach very closely to this type of coloring 

 in being uniformly olive and having the stripes indistinct or wanting. 



As a rule, however, the ground color of the Oregon and Washington 

 specimens are darker than those from California. At first sight this 

 fact, together with the reduced scutellation of the former, might 

 seem to indicate that we are here dealing w^ith two forms, but as the 

 differences between the two sections are slight, of degree only, and 

 far from constant, I can not consider them sufficient grounds for 

 dividing the form as I understand it. 



Affinities. — Owing to the position of the lateral stripe upon the 

 second and third rows, ordinoides can be classed only with the Sirtalis 



a This is the T. infernalis of Baird and Girard, Cope, and later writers. The red 

 may also occur in the specimens which are intermediate between elegans and ordi- 

 noides. 



