TEIID LIZARDS OF THE GENUS CNEMIDOPHORUS 9 



the Te'tus of iNIerrem. A third species of Cne?nl(iop/ioj-u.s was de- 

 scribed as jSeps murinus by Laurenti in 1768, a fourtli as Auieiva 

 tesscUata by Say in 1823, and a fifth as Tcjus ocellifer by Sf)ix in 

 1825. The abundant Mexican species, deppii and guttatus^ were 

 made known by AViegmann in 1834 in his pioneer contribution, the 

 Herpetologia ^Nfexicana. An excellent summary of the knowledge 

 of the C)ii'n\hJ()pliO)''i described prior to 1839 was given by Dumeril 

 and Bibron in their Erpetologie Generale. 



During the last half of the past century and the first quarter of 

 the present, many excellent collections, from a wide range of locali- 

 ties, have served as bases for the delineation of a large number of 

 new forms of C nemldopliorus. Baird and Girard, Hallowell, Cope, 

 Gadow, and Van Denburgh have been the outstanding contributors 

 to our knowledge of the genus during this period. The earlier of 

 these workers wrote descriptions that were generally brief, and the 

 characters emphasized often proved unimportant later when more 

 forms became known or more specimens became available. Thus, 

 numy of the ideas of relationships conveyed in these original descrip- 

 tions have been of little value. The work of Cope is transitional. 

 This authority, although ever ready to describe a new species when 

 ]ierplexed, was on the whole more correct in his estimates of rela- 

 tionships. He never hesitated to subject his own species as well as 

 those of others to taxonomic change at a moment's notice. This 

 open-mindedness, although on the whole desirable, often brought con- 

 fusion, as a study of the following tables of synonymy will indicate. 

 In his disregard for the geographic factor in speciation, an act, such 

 as that W'hich prompted his reference to Van Denburgh's western 

 stejnegeri as a subspecies of the grahaiml of Texas, or his allusion 

 to a specimen of C. tessellatus tessellatus from Reno, Nev., as his 

 C. tessellatus 7nultiscuiatus of Cerros Island, often conveys more real 

 truth than the work of others who have overlooked or ignored the 

 geographic repetition of those characters that are definitely corre- 

 lated with environmental conditions. 



More recently, Gadow (1903-1910), in a series of articles based 

 upon tlie Mexican species of Gneiiiidopliorus^ has made a serious 

 attempt to show the importance of variational studies in the inter- 

 pretation of genetic relationships. Unfortunately he selected for 

 his study sf)ecimens from a limited, highly diversified area near the 

 present center of distribution of the genus as a whole. Yet, in spite 

 of the fact that the series examined were wholly inadequate, and the 

 difficulties many, some interesting and well-known results were 

 obtained. 



Western herpctology has developed greatly through the efforts of 

 the late Doctor Van Denburgh, whose chief contributions have been 

 2306—31 2 



