332 Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History. 



especially strong. Fingers and toes slender, cylindrical, with 

 small round tubercles at the articulations below. One palmar 

 and three plantar tubercles. The first or inner toe is shortest, 

 the fourth very much the longest, while the two intermediate 

 toes, the second and third, with the others, form a series the 

 members of which regularly increase in length outward; the 

 fifth toe is about as long as the second. 



Color above olive-brown or gray, marked and spotted with 

 dusky; below pale yellowish, closely marbled with purplish, 

 but more yellowish posteriorly on the abdomen and under side 

 of the femora. Two wide, poorly defined pale bands begin 

 at the fold of the skin behind the eyes and pass backward 

 and slightly downward to the insertion of the femora; they are 

 bordered above by a sinuous band of interrupted elongate dark 

 spots, and below by a wider continuous dark band, which in 

 front passes immediately over the fore legs, through the eye 

 and around the snout, where it unites with its fellow of the 

 opposite side. Two dark bands cross the tibia. The throat of 

 adult males is bluish black. The colors vary with age and, to 

 some extent also, at the will of the animal. Older examples 

 are darker, and the markings are in them more obscure. The 

 characteristic markings are consequently more apparent on 

 medium-sized specimens because of the paler color and conse- 

 quent greater contrast between it and the dark marks. Exam- 

 ined with a lens, the skin of the body is seen to be sprinkled 

 with minute dark specks, the closer aggregations of which 

 form the dark spots, while their absence in numerous small 

 irregular areas on the abdomens of the younger examples 

 produces a fine mottling of the under side. Occasionally the 

 pale bands on the sides of the back are so nearly the shade 

 of the ground color as not to be apparent; and they may 

 be rendered still more obscure by the absence of the dark 

 band which generally bounds them above. A very young speci- 

 men before me has a series of small dark spots ahmg the mid- 

 dle of the back. The feet are more or less spotted with dark 

 above. A black spot over the vent seems to be constant. 



Length of body of an adult male, 1; length of head from 

 tip of snout to the cervical fold, .19; vertical diameter of head, 

 .12; from tip of snout to axilla, .50. 



