119 



with a covering nearly as thick and tough as that of the egg of the Hetero- 

 don. Could these eggs have have been in the oviducts and then squeezed 

 out into the body cavity during the time of being entwined with the male ? 

 The thickness of the egg covering makes it appear to me highly probable 

 that the eggs are destined to be laid before the young will be mature 

 enough for independent existence.* t 



Some years ago, in midsummer, I found a number of the eggs of the 

 house enake which had been deposited in a pile of stable manure. This 

 was in Bureau county. III. Xo record was kept of the number of the eggs, 

 but a few of them (U. S. Nat. Mus., No. 17955) were preserved in alcohol. 

 When found, the eggs were glued together into one mass. Each egg is 2 

 inches long and nearly an inch and a quarter in the short diameter. On 

 the outside is found a thick, leathery, yellow covering, beneath which is a 

 much thinner coat. From one of these eggs I have taken a young snake 

 which measures lOi] inches in length. Attached to this embryo is a con- 

 siderable mass of yolk, a condition which indicates that the embryo is not 

 ready for hatching. Nevertheless, all the generic and specific characters 

 are well shown. There is a well-developed egg-tooth. The intromittent 

 organs are everted in the specimen examined. I^ach consists of a rather 

 slender and twisted basal stalk, at the end of which is the swollen glans. 

 This is acorn-shaped at the base, but terminates, at the dietal end, in two 

 blunt lobes. The base of the glans is densely spinose, the remainder re- 

 ticulately papilose. The seminal groove winds around the basal stalk and 

 terminates at the tip of one of the terminal lobes, the larger one. 



Concerning the breeding habits of the black-racer, Bascanion constrictor, 

 I find little in print. It is well known that the young differ markedly 

 from the adults, being decidedly spotted. Dr. Weinland, as already stated. 



'•'■Since the above has gone to press, I have had the opportunity, April 29, of dissecting a 

 recently raptured female, the length of which was 4 feet 4 inches. The ovaries lie in the 

 region situated about two thirds the distance from the head to the vent. Each oviduct 

 ends close to the corresponding ovary. It seems evident, therefore, that at least some of 

 the eggs of the specimen described above are really lying loose in the body cavity. In 

 the specimen dissected, the ovarian eggs are very immature, none of them exceeding 

 about a quarter of an inch in length. It may be of some interest to add that this female had 

 the anterior three- fourths of the body ornamented with blotches of a decided red color, 

 the red occupying both the surfaces of the scales and the skin between them. The 

 blotches were separated by scales which were partly yellow. Soon after death a great 

 part of the red disappeared. The stomach contained eight wild mice, six of them young. 



1 1 am able to state that Coluber obsohfas is oviparous. Mr. Thomas Marron, of the Na- 

 tional Museum, early in April, 1889, collected a number of snake eggs in a hollow stump 

 near the Potomac river. They were opened and found to contain fully developed young 

 of this species, (U. S. Nat. Mus., No. 15334).— Leonhard Stejneger. 



