338 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol.108 



ing at least one large ovarian egg, the date it was collected probably 

 fell somewhere between July 25 and not much later than August 7. 

 During this period Gambel was collecting a number of plants near 

 the river and, in the course of such collecting, had, like modern-daj^ 

 botanists with herpetological leanings, ample opportunity to collect 

 lizards as well. 



Assuming that Gambel did collect C. perplexus on the Rio Grande 

 River near Santa Fe, he may or may not have shipped it home before 

 leaving for California. The fall express for Independence left Santa 

 Fe shortly after July 25, on which date Gambel wrote a letter (Penn- 

 sylvania Historical Society collection) home to his mother in Phila- 

 delphia. Nuttall had urged that Gambel dispatch his plants to 

 George Engelmann of St. Louis, who was to send them through a 

 John H. Barnard on to Nuttall m Philadelphia. Nuttall (letter, 

 Nuttall to Engelmann, Nov. 3, 1841; Missouri Botanical Gardens) 

 received a letter from Gambel at Santa Fe stating that he intended 

 to send to Nuttall via Engelmann "a part of the collections he had 

 made up to that place by another party returning to St. Louis in 

 October." There is nothing, however, among the Engelmann cor- 

 respondence at the Missouri Botanical Gardens to suggest that En- 

 gelmann ever received Gambel's shipments from Santa Fe, either from 

 the annual express or from an October party. If shipments were 

 made, they must eventually have reached Philadelphia and the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences but undoubtedl3^ after Nuttall had de- 

 parted for England at the end of 1841. Thus they probably would 

 have remained in storage at the Academy. It seems logical that 

 Gambel would ship east anything collected to this point, since the 

 next shipment point would have to be from California, over a thou- 

 sand miles away across difficult country. But apparently no such 

 shipment was made. Judging from the gravid condition of the type 

 of Cnemidophorus perplexus the chances of its havmg been collected 

 before the fall express left for Independence is very slight. It appears, 

 then, as though Gambel carried all of his collections to California. 



How the specimens eventually reached the Smithsonian Institution 

 is as obscure as where they were originally collected. In the Seventh 

 Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1853, p. 55) there is a 

 notation under the section on new 1852 reptile accessions, "A small 

 number of specimens procured by Dr. Gambel, in the same country, 

 has also come into the possession of the Institution." There is, un- 

 fortunately, no further information on the accession. The accessions 

 immediately^ preceding this entry were of specimens from California. 

 It appears from this entry and Baird and Girard's (1852) locality no- 

 tations that Gambel must have shipped all of his herpetological col- 

 lections from California and that the original recipient of these col- 

 lections, whoever he may have been, simply assumed that it was there 



