834 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1898. 



each other. Parietals rather narrow, longer than muzzle from frontal. 

 Eye moderate; center rather in advance of junction of fourth and fifth 

 labials; orbit above the whole of these labials. Labials eight above, 

 penultimate the largest; eleven below. 



Body elongated, little compressed. Tail shorter than in any species, 

 except C. vuJpinus. Carination very obsolete, visible only on the five 

 central rows, and there very indistinctly; not evident on the tail. 

 Scales rather large, triangular, ijointed, the exterior row little if any 

 larger than the rest. 



General color of body above light red, paler on the sides. Along the 

 back a series of dorsal blotches, about forty-five in number, thirty-two 

 from head to anus. These blotches anteriorly are longitudinally quad- 

 rate, gradually becoming transverse; in front they are concave before 

 and behind, and with the corners produced longitudinally; exteriorly 

 they are zigzag convex. The color of each blotch is a dark brick-red, 



Fij;. 189. 



COLUBEK GITTATUS GUTTATUS LlNN^US. 



= 1. 



Fort Morgan, Alabama. 



C.it. No. Ii5(iu, U.S.N.M. 



with a deep black margin half a scale wide. Exterior to the black is 

 a lighter shade of the ground color. On each side of the dorsal series 

 is a second alternating one of smaller elongated blotches, similarly 

 constituted as to color. A third opposite to the dorsal occurs on the 

 edge of the abdomen, and on the first to the fourth row of scales; in 

 this the red is lightei-, and the black is confined to a few scattered 

 scales. The lateral blotches are more or less indistinct in places, and 

 frequently confluent with each other and the dorsal series. Posteriorly, 

 too, they are reduced more or less to the black marks in single scales. 

 Color beneath yellowish white, with subquadrangular blotches of black, 

 generally occupying half of the inferior surface of the abdominal 

 scutellii'. 



The ground color of the sides extends up on the forehead in the form 

 of a frontlet, which crosses the vertical at its anterior extremity, passes 

 backward along the top of the head, including the superciliaries and 

 outside of occipitals, crosses above the angle of the mouth, and runs 

 into the sides of the neck. This is narrowly margined on both edges 



