360 BULLETIN 17 7, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



There is a young snake (No. 55032, one of the paratypes) that is 

 uniformly white on the whole ventral surface, with the exception of a 

 few black spots near the ends of the first 30 ventrals. This snake, 

 instead of being an intense lustrous black above, is more nearly olive- 

 brown, with the first two scale rows lightening to grayish blue, which 

 color also appears at the extreme outer ends of the ventrals. There is 

 a trace of a light stripe leading from the eye through the outer border 

 of the parietals, but this stripe quickly merges with the dark body 

 color. Another snake nearly fully grown (No. 65787) is light beneath, 

 although some of the ventrals are suffused with dark on their anterior 

 edges. This specimen, which is also olive-brown, shows a very 

 distinct narrow black middorsal stripe leading from the neck almost 

 to the beginning of the tail. On this specimen anteriorly there are 

 indications of a dark lateral stripe occurring on the fourth, fifth, and 

 part of the sixth scale rows and bordered above by a narrow white 

 stripe on adjoining parts of the sixth and seventh. 



Out of a series from Laguna three are very young specimens, 

 evidently not long out of the egg. It may be worth while to note the 

 variation in color in these three specimens from the same brood. They 

 are all uniformly slate-black above; in only one of them (No. 66723) 

 is there even a faint trace of a light stripe beginning at the eye and 

 merging into the dark body color on the neck. The ventral surface 

 is dark bluish gray in two of them (Nos. 66721 and 66722), while in 

 the third the belly is nearly white. In No. 66722 the throat and chin 

 are heavily speckled with black, a black spot appearing even on the 

 first, fifth, and sixth upper labials on both sides; in the other two 

 snakes the chin and throat are nearly immaculate. In all these 

 specimens there is a more or less regular series of dots along the outer 

 ends of the anterior ventral scales, while a row of black spots on the 

 side of the neck occupying parts of the first and second scale rows can 

 be readily discerned in two of the specimens. A nearly adult snake 

 from Jovero (No. 65787) and another from LiaH (No. 65788) show 

 lateral stripes, though the dorsal surface is much darker in hue than 

 the average protenus. The ventral coloration is also light, and I 

 regard these specimens as approaching protenus, though still bearing 

 much of the melanism characteristic of niger. 



Specimens examined. — As listed in table 70. 



