CROCODILIANS, LIZARDS, AND SNAKES. 



853 



to the iinus (in one spcciiuen only tliirty-three anterior to the anus). 

 These are ten or twelve scales broad, two or three long, and separated 

 by intervals of one or two scale^. They are narrowly margined with 

 black. On each side of the dorsal series, and alternating with it, is a 

 series of smaller, nearly circnlar, bnt similarly constituted blotches 

 extending between the third and seventh or eighth rows; below this 

 and on the second and third rows is a still smaller and quite distinct 

 third series, and occasionally traces of a fourth on the first and second. 

 The ground color or space between the blotches is grayish ash; each 

 scale minutely mottled with dark brown or black; the extreme border 



Fig. 197. 



Coluber emoryi I'.aird and Cirahd. 



; 1.33. 



Pecos Eiver, Texas. 



CM. N.i. I-ir., r.S.N.M. 



generally pure ash, especially on the sides. Beneath yellowish white, 

 with rather indistinct blotches of brownish ash, thickest behind. 



Head grayish ash, with a somewhat curved broad brown vittaon the 

 back part of the i)()stfrontals, which, involving the commissure of the 

 anteorbital and su])erciliary, passes back through the eye, and, crossing 

 the angle of the mouth on the adjacent halves of the ultimate and 

 penultimate labials, extends into the blotches on the sides of the ueck. 

 A second nearly effaced bar crosses the anterior frontals, leaving an 

 ash-colored band half the width of the first-mentioned bar. The ante- 

 rior dorsal blotch is replaced by two elongated ones running up on the 

 head to the center of the occipitals, parallel with the postocular vitta, 

 with an ash-colored stri])e between the two, which extends from the 

 superciliary backward on the sides of the neck. As in the other brown 



