ART. 25 CHINESE AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES STEJNEGER 45 



1848. Plistodon Agassiz, Nomencl. Zool. Index Univers., p. 863 (emenda- 

 tion). 



1852. Lamprosaurus Hallowell, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 1852,^ 

 (p. 206) (type L. guttulatus) . 



It seems desirable to recount briefly the steps by which the type of 

 this genus has been determined. 



In his Herpetologia Mexicana (1834) Wiegmann separated a sub- 

 genus Eumeces from the genus Euprepis of Wagner (1830) and in- 

 cluded in it three species, without designating any of them as type, 

 namely, E. punctatus, E. rufescens^ and E. pavimentatus. During the 

 following year, in an article reviewing his own work,^^ and before 

 anj^body else designated a genotype for Eumeces, he expressly states 

 that he had erroneously included in it Scincus rufescens Merrem and 

 punctatus Schneider ; " both," he says, " belong to Euprepes s. str., 

 only Sc. pavimentatus Geoifr. belongs to Eumecesy In no more 

 definite way could the latter be designated as the genotype. Never- 

 theless, in 1839, Dumeril and Bibron ^^ made E. punctatus the type 

 and, in 1843, Fitzinger *° designated E. rufescens, but their action, 

 of course, does not influence the original determination at all. 



EUMECES ELEGANS Boulenger 



Eumeces elegans Stejnegeb, Herp. Japan, 1907, p. 202. — Van Denburgh, 

 Proc. California Acad. Sci., ser. 4, vol. 3, Dec. 1912, p. 223 (Mokanshan, 

 near Huchou, Chekiang). — Vogt, Sitz. Ber. Ges. Naturf. Freunde, Berlin, 

 1914, p. 100 (Canton). 



1912. Eumeces xantlii Barbour, Meui. Mns. Comp. ZoiJl., vol. 40, no. 1, 

 Aug. 1912, p. 134 (Ichang) (not of Guenther, 1889). 



After a careful examination of the young specimen in the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology (Xo. 7965) collected by W. R. Zappey at 

 Ichang, the type locality of Eumeces xanthi, for the loan of which I 

 am greatly indebted to my friend Dr. Thomas Barbour, I have come 

 to the conclusion that it is a very young E. elegans and not E. xanthi. 

 It matches in every respect specimens at hand of the former, in the 

 number and size of scales; the absence of a postnasal; the absence 

 of a second azygos postmental ; the presence of one pair of nuchals 

 only ; presence of enlarged scales on the posterior aspect of the femur 

 and of a keeled scale behind the corners of the arms; and in the 

 coloration which is exactely as in Graham's specimen No. 64126 from 

 Szechwan, Sowerby's from Foochow, and Illick's from Nanking. 

 This latter, and in fact all the other specimens of E. eJegans ex- 

 amined by me, except the Szechwan and the Wenchow specimens have 

 the same postmental arrangement of scales, the two latter differing 

 only in having a small median scale separating the first paired post- 

 mental shields which consequently are not in contact, but this ar- 



=^ Arcliiv fiir Naturgeschichte, 1835, vol. 2, p. 288. 

 «> Erpgt. Gt^n., vol. 5, p. 630. 

 *" Syst. Kept., p. 23. 



