114 BULLETIN 17 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



"Dimensions. — Head and body, 27 mm.; tail, 25 mm.; width of 

 head, 5 mm.; tip of snout to ear, 7 mm.; foreleg, 7 mm.; hindleg, 

 10 mm. 



"Coloration in alcohol. — Upper surfaces sepia; body with six wide, 

 clove-brown bars arranged in pairs, the anterior pair between the 

 shoulders and enclosing two very conspicuous round white spots; tail 

 with about eight transverse, unpaired, irregular, clove-brown cross- 

 bars; under parts pale drab, with cloudings of sepia on the throat and 

 sides, and a few larger sepia spots beneath the tail; limbs sepia with a 

 few scattered clove-brown dots above. Head sepia, lightening towards 

 the snout. 



"Paratypes. — Three additional specimens, U.S.N.M. Nos. 74971- 

 74973, come from the same locality and bear the same data as does the 

 type. 



"Variations. — One of the paratypes has slightly larger dorsals — 

 seven in the standard distance — than is the case in the type. The 

 only immature individual has about 10 dorsals to the standard dis- 

 tance. The subdigital lamellae vary from 11 to 13. The only 

 variation in the head plates comes in the shape and size of the two 

 small post-nasals, and in the enlarged scales covering the top of the 

 snout, which are slightly finer in the paratypes than in the type. 

 The largest specimen is 28 mm. from snout to vent; the tail unfortu- 

 nately is missing. 



"Judging from the four examples at hand, variation is slight in this 

 species. Color pattern is higlily similar in all, but brighter in the 

 paratypes, and with two black crescent-shaped marks covering the 

 occiput, and a large round frontal spot which gives off a black median 

 line which goes forward to the rostral. 



"Relationships. — The new species seems to be intermediate between 

 Sphaerodactylus richardsonii of Jamaica, and S. macrolepis found 

 widely distributed in Mona, Vieques and Porto Rico as well as on 

 some of the islands lying to the east of Porto Rico. 



"In coloration the new species is very close to richardsonii. The 

 cross-bars are even more pronounced than they appear in the figure of 

 richardsonii (Barbour, Mem. Mus. Comp. Zool., vol. 47, No. 3, 1921, 

 plate 5, fig. 3), but are essentially similar in arrangement. The dark 

 frontal spot, barely suggested in the figure of richardsonii, is very- 

 prominent in three of the four examples of samanensis, while these 

 three likewise possess two black crescent-shaped marks crossing the 

 occiput. But in macrolepis, only a very partial resemblance in pattern 

 may be traced with samanensis. There is no dark frontal spot in 

 macrolepsis; instead, there is a prominent dark occipital spot, which 

 often is bounded by longitudinal markings instead of transverse 

 crescents as in samanensis. While the dark interscapular band con- 

 taining the two white spots is found in both species, macrolepis is 



