THE HERPETOLOGY OF HISPANIOLA 



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patches of black dots, which characterizes the melanura group. In 

 all my specimens the eight rows of spots on the body are present, as 

 is also the case with two Cuban snakes (Nos. 56328 and 27455). 



Variations. — The type specimen is so far exceptional in having 29 

 rows of scales at midbody. As in so many other instances, the lack 

 of sufficient material limits our knowledge as to the true extremes of 

 variation. In Barbour and Ramsden's Herpetology of Cuba, they say 

 concerning the validity of the form haetiana of Cope that "its peculiar 

 character was supposed to be due to the presence of an interparietal 

 . . ." This is a slip, for the absence of an interparietal was one of 

 the characters selected by Cope as a means of distinguishing his 



Figure 95. — Dorsal pattern of Troptdophis maculatus haetianus, same specimen as shown in 



fig. 94. 



species haetiana, as the original description reads "parietals in contact 

 medially," and no mention of an interparietal is made. A few of 

 the Hispaniolan specimens (U.S.N.M. Nos. 35980, 64910, 70459, and 

 M.C.Z. No. 8739a) have an interparietal, in all cases a very small 

 one, which does not prevent the parietals from being in contact 

 medially in their anterior portion. Jan's figure 14 shows a specimen 

 with two small interparietals completely separating the parietals, the 

 specimen, he states, having been collected in Santo Domingo. The 

 Cuban and Jamaican specimens, on the other hand, have one or two 

 interparietals, usually large and separating the parietals entirely. 

 In one snake from Habana, No. 56328, the parietals are in contact 

 anteriorly. 



The enlargement of the vertebral scales occurs very irregularly in 

 the species under consideration. In most of the specimens I have 

 seen there is a series of a dozen or more conspicuously enlarged scales 

 on the back a short distance anterior to the vent. Some of the 



14 Iconographie gfingrale des ophidiens, livr. 5, pi. 2, fig. 1, 1864. 



