286 BULLETIN 17 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



paniolan mainland. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the Gonave 

 Island lizards tend to a maximum of spotting and a minimum of 

 striping. On the mainland occurs the highly striped affinis, in which 

 spots are seldom found; this form has not yet been found on the 

 neighboring islets, although the spotted chrysolaema occurs indiscrimi- 

 nately all over the mainland and the nearer islets as weU as on Gonave. 

 The effects of isolation in defining a color phase are shown in the Beata 

 Island lizard, which seems to be separable on color alone, as no ten- 

 dency toward striping is to be found, even in the very young, although 

 the spots are disposed in longitudinal rows. I am retaining ahhotti 

 as a subspecific name, since it belongs to a race now entirely separated 

 geographically from its ancestral stock, where further differentiation 

 may well continue to take place. 



Figure 79. — Ameiva chrysolaema abbotti: a, Top of head; b, side of head; c, chin and throat; 

 d, middorsal granules. U.S.N. M. No. 83885, from Beata Island, Dominican Republic. 

 One and one-half natural size. 



Noble's distinction of abbotti from chrysolaema by the frontal being 

 in contact with the third supraocular or separated from it by a row of 

 small scales does not hold absolutely. The amount of contact between 

 the prefrontals also is an extremely variable feature in large series of 

 specimens. 



Description. — U.S.N. M. No. 83885, an adult from Beata Island, 

 Dominican Republic, taken May 11, 1931, by Dr. A. Wetmore and 

 F. C. Lincoln. Profile of head flat on top, curved at the snout; 

 nostril anterior to the nasal suture; rostral forming an acute angle 

 behind; anterior nasals broadly in contact behind to rostral; fronto- 

 nasal as wide as long, in contact with the large loreal, very broadly 

 angulate in front; prefrontals broadly in contact; frontal in contact 

 with the three anterior preoculars ; three large preoculars and a fourth 

 one less than one-quarter the size of the third; anterior preocular not 



