A NEW SALAMANDER FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 



By Emmett Reid Dunn 



In my "Salamanders of the Family Plethodontidae " (1926) I was 

 inclined to regard the record of Ensatina croceater from " a district 

 about 75 miles southeast of San Diego " ' which Cope reported " from 

 near San Diego "^ as really referring to eschschoUsii, because the 

 latter occurs in the Coast Range and in the San Bernardinos, thus 

 intervening between the other records of croceater and the above- 

 mentioned'one. The most southern record of croceater aside from the 

 Lower California one was Fort Tejon, Kern County, which is the 

 type locality, but which may well be vague and erroneous, at least 

 as ±o exactness. All other records were from the Sierras. Therefore 

 in the absence of actual specimens the divided range of croceater led 

 me to question the identification of the Lower California specimen. 



Recently L. :M. Klauber ^ has figured one specimen and given rec- 

 ords of five salamanders from San Diego County and two from Riv- 

 erside County which he considers croceater and which thus tend to 

 confirm the record of Cope and Lockington. 



He also suggests that my allocation of their specimen to the San 

 Pedro Martir Mountains is incorrect, as they lie 140 miles south- 

 east of San Diego, and says Lagima Hanson, 77 miles southeast, is a 

 more probable station. 



Klauber's figure impressed me as being different from any 

 croceater I had seen (12 from the Sierra Nevada). Two specimens 

 in the United States National Museum (Nos. 75229-30) from near 

 Banning, Riverside County, confirm this impression, and make it 

 apparent that we have to do with a third Californian species of 

 Ensatina, found in the San Jacinto, Laguna, and Cuyamaca Moun- 

 tains, in Riverside and San Diego Counties, and also probably in 

 Lower California. This makes eschscholtzii in California restricted 

 to the northern Sierras, the Coast Range, and the San Bernardinos, 

 and croceater to the southern Sierras. 



1 Lockington, 1880, Aincr. Nat., p. 295. 



»Cope, 1889, Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. 34, p. 151. 



3 1927, Bull. Zool. Soc. San Diego, no. 3, p. 2, fig. 1. 



No. 2770.— Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 74, Art. 25 



15686—28 1 



